 
Published by Capacity Press (Ray Succre)

Copyright Ray Succre 2012

Cover design. Ray Succre

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is dedicated to Elijah J. Brubaker and Jeremy S. Kemp, great artists and grand friends, and for whose company the author is perpetually grateful. The author would also like to thank the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation, a wealth of information on an interesting man.
Table of Contents

ACT I

Chapter One| Fade In

Chapter Two| North High School

Chapter Three| Leyte

Chapter Four| Antioch

Chapter Five| WKCD in Cincinnati

Chapter Six| Tuesday with Maury

Chapter Seven| If You Say So

Chapter Eight| Smith for a Paycheck

Chapter Nine| DISSOLVE TO: THE EMMY

ACT II

Chapter Ten| All the System and Other Stories

Chapter Eleven| Long Talk

Chapter Twelve| And Here's the Wind-Up...

Chapter Thirteen| Creative Control

Chapter Fourteen| The Other Side

Chapter Fifteen| Dear William

Chapter Sixteen| Listen, You Want to Get a Beer?

Chapter Seventeen| CUT TO: THE MIND - NIGHT

Chapter Eighteen| Cancelled

Chapter Nineteen| A Boy and His Mother (and Everyone Else)

Chapter Twenty| Hindsight

Chapter Twenty-One| Marks

Chapter Twenty-Two| All the Advice I Have Left for You

Chapter Twenty-Three| Baruch Dayan Emet

Chapter Twenty-Four| Third Time's the Charm

Chapter Twenty-Five| REVOLVE TO: MEANING - DAY

Chapter Twenty-Six| A Certain Blade of Logic

Chapter Twenty-Seven| Through the Looking Glass

Chapter Twenty-Eight| Dishonorable Discharge

ACT III

Chapter Twenty-Nine| Uncercranked Clockwise Pan

Chapter Thirty| Hong Kong

Chapter Thirty-One| The Black Come to Life

Chapter Thirty-Two| The Numbers, The Dim, and Larry

Chapter Thirty-Three| Crossfade

Chapter Thirty-Four| The Moon

Chapter Thirty-Five| Whirring from the Large Camera

Chapter Thirty-Six| The After Hours

Chapter Thirty-Seven| Seven Levels

Chapter Thirty-Eight| Mr. Asher

Chapter Thirty-Nine| Matters of the Heart

Chapter Forty| Thank You and Good Night

Epilogue
Thank You and Good Night

### ACT I

FADE IN:

EXT. CAYUGA LAKE, 1936 - LATE AFTERNOON

A slow pan over the surface of Cayuga breaking with white reflections from the light of overhead summer. Beyond the rim of the lake, the parti-colored foliage of upstate New York, cabins cloistered on the coveted view, their reflections atop the lake's outer edge and always at end the frisky motions of the younger vacationers.

LOW ANGLE SHOT from the active lake's surface to an area near the shore, devoid of groups. We see a boy and a man walking from the lake into a seasonally umber field.

DISSOLVE TO:

The twelve-year-old EMERY ASHER and 1ST CAVALRY LIEUTENANT MERRILL, a uniformed confederate soldier with his saber drawn. As day enfolds them, the two appear comfortable with one another, old friends, and the leader of these two does not seem to be the older. The ASHER boy leads. He is being accompanied.

CROSSFADE TO:

Summer. The faltering breezes of Cayuga met her child compatriots, whose every splash against her surface surprised the afternoon. The sway of low viburnum felt this push of wind, moving like the jangle of light castanets. Above, the sheer Sun. Below, a warm coating of just-disturbed lake water, the scent of which signaled a recreational feeling in those who could discern it. Over the black walnut tree near Mud Lock, a loon gave trill of her joys in a sudden harp, tattling to the Sun about the workings of her wings. In those moments and through many more, a boy and his guardian traipsed into the fields beyond the trees. They walked in hunt, searching for great prey.

The cavalry lieutenant spoke with a rich, southern intonation, a drawl that found, at times, certain pep in his pronunciations, speech that moved quickly between tiredness with vowels and a zest with the stresses of words. As he spoke, his long beard and conjoined moustache dipped with his chin in a playful and energetic manner. That Merrill's hat fit, snug against his temples, was no confidence against his hair, which was copious, all gray, and somewhat unkempt. He was a certain sort of very old fighter. Lieutenant Merrill had been a military man, but had long ago been congratulated, dismissed, and forgotten. He had left his active service to past decades, was near to sixty years a veteran of Lee's army, and he had not aged a day since Appomattox. His old body, while certain and still strong, did bear the mark of a man who had seen much and lived full measure.

"Perfect weather for it," the Lieutenant remarked, gait slight to maintain his place beside the boy.

"I don't like it," Emery said, "A hotter day will make our prey more courageous."

"Yes, it will be a dangerous hunt," Merrill agreed, looking at the boy for a reaction to this statement, however small, an indication that Emery was apprehensive. There was no smoke of this, however. Merrill's confederate pride swelled; he found no fear in the boy.

"We'll have it dead by five," Emery planned.

"That soon?"

"Mmm. And eat until we feel to burst."

Though a browser, with teeth replete in those pulverizing nubs best suited for grinding leaves, and a bulk designed to keep upward where its fodder grew, the mastodon was still, by no measure, simple quarry. Though an herbivore, the beast was fearsome and filled with a certain delight for the stamping murder of all small creatures, of which near everything was fit in comparison his mass. Sociopathic by nature, the monumental beast held in its mind an image of mutilation with each heavy step. By holding this disturbing image and hunger in its mind, like an image burned into film, the mastodon was never off its guard, or in any means without urge or short temper. Its tusks could gore a man in half with but a single motion and even the cold death in its eyes could take a life with but a glance. Lucifer himself could not have envisioned a more atrocious, hate-filled mass of flesh and tusky malevolence.

One had to lurk, was the thing; stay in the brush that lined the animal's resting grounds, peer out and stay motionless until the sentry-like devil decided to uproot itself and travel. The mastodon would eventually move toward the grove, toward the fruit and leaves it kept near, into the arms of the trees. That was the opportune moment, the time for chance, when a hunter crept, low and with the tall grass in his face, slow and certain to the animal's rear, flanking. When a man's shadow was aligned with his breathing and his crouch was just so, near enough the unwary monster, with both heartbeats in his very fingertips and eyes focused most... that's when the hunter sprang and made his grievous gambit. The stabbing could not be thirsty or random, angry or felt, but needed to be tacit in reasoning. The attack required a spot into which the saber could pierce with precision and, once into the flesh of the animal, go deep as clarity.

"The jugular, then?" Lieutenant Merrill asked.

"Right in the throat. Between the shoulder and jaw. I come up from beneath," Emery detailed.

"That's it. But one cut and then you run. To the grove. Promise me you'll make the single cut and then run. And don't miss that artery; he'll be wary of us then and we won't achieve a sneak on him again."

"You need no promise of my skill; I know my way around a saber, sir," Emery said.

"We'll see. Just wound him and let him give chase to the grove. I'll fire from my mount there to assure the matter. This hunt might end up in a chase, I think. Him after me. But he won't catch the sprint of my Lauderdale, so I might fire many times in the safety of our speed."

"And we bleed the thing."

"It's a good way. Very old. We work it to its slow death."

"With any luck," Emery said.

"No no, my boy. We forgive ourselves luck," Merrill said, "We are the last soldiers in our great Confederacy. You and I are to move with diligence. We're in it for the full bounty. With God above and Mr. Colt on our sides, you see."

"Right, for the South."

"Yes, well done. For the South. For the War Department. Now take up the saber."

The lieutenant's ever-slung ammunition pouch wobbled against his leather belt and holster. He leaned his head aside and removed the sword's sheath-strap from his shoulder. After a brief testing of the weapon's weight, he spun the sheathed sword around and presented it to the boy. Pure curve. Grave design. Sharp death sheathed in steel and chamois. Soon, young Emery had attached the scabbard to his waist. He tightened the strap over his chest and across his nape. His height was matched by the length of the sword, however, and the sheath's tip against the ground made a brief, scraping ruckus as they walked.

"Pivot the handle down, keep yourself quiet," Merrill whispered. Emery nodded and did as advised, saying nothing. There was such foresight in the boy; a born hunter. Young Emery seemed to be soldier at his most green, but an achiever, and a boy on which to base one's expectations. He was a fine young being who would do much good that day. They made their way toward the beast quietly before parting company, Emery crouching into the grass and the Lieutenant sneaking off to the grove at the field's edge. The lieutenant mounted his tethered horse, Lauderdale, and had a time of saddled wait with his shooting iron.

The mastodon was in the field's center, as if that powerful animal featured the faculty to know this position gave its hunters a declined benefit. Mastodons were fierce creatures and quite accustomed to death's tactics, having many of these maneuvers at their disposal. A desperate animal looking to make a meal of a mastodon would have to attempt many things to succeed, and in so attempting would have inadvertently taught the mastodon, or its peers, over time and application, how to avoid them all. Emery would have to move in near silence and cover a strong distance to reach his quarry. If the flank was not made before the animal stood, its neck would be too high for the saber to reach. Merrill's later gunshots would likely do too little damage without the blood loss of the slit artery aiding in the beast's downfall.

Emery was President of his class. Yes, at West Junior High, and his Scout training had been followed with stringency. The responsibilities of Emery's young life were as the bobbles of a bird. No effort, no trial; life and youth were simply how one walked for a time. Money turned many dials in a man's life, however, particularly when that money was present for one's youth. Emery had heard it called privilege, and thought he might disagree if this were approached formally, in argument. Informally, he had been given riding time on chestnut horses, ate well, wore the clothes expected of his station, and he was well-loved. Emery had an older brother from which to model his mistakes and degrees, a mother willing to cook fresh mastodon pies, and a father lenient to a boy's certain flights of imagination. Perhaps this was, in a more questionable marrow, a truer privilege than currency and resource. That his father might sell the gained meat that day for sale in his shop was the impetus behind the fervent hunt. A young boy might provide, after all. Capital was a fuel of the civilized world, but was not provision its true ruler?

The hour passed with a lugubrious boredom, spent alone, creeping along the grassy floor. He had removed his shirt to stave off the rustling of cloth against soil. Moving on his hands and knees, each moment of inching motion had him aware of the scabbard's possible noise against stone or stalk. The saber in his hand reached out in those slow creeps as he made his cautious, hungry way to the monster's flank. It was here, beside the great, living meat of the animal, that his appetite began asking him to hurry. The boy was patient however, pulling in his stomach to keep it from rumbling and exposing his position to the slumbering animal. His target was near. The neck. Just before him. He had to move slower than ever, so close to the sheeted ears, so near to those tusks that could sweep him to the air with broken ribs or back...

And then Emery sprang his well-laid assail. He lurched to his feet in a rush with the saber drawn back. The animal's deathly eyes shot open and the tusks lost their stillness. Twice through the mass of neck the saber shot, deep and bringing out the hot blood beneath. Emery turned and ran, the fatal blows having been struck. The beast began to move. Emery reached his good sprint, feet the scatter of drums against evening, the ground beneath in a blur as the grass whipped against his bare belly. He ran his certain, swift way toward the grove, hoping only that he was fast enough to reach this place of assured safety. The stomping, earth-tremoring mastodon had lifted onto its feet. With heavy, quickening steps, the animal began after the small hunter. Emery nearly fell as the sound of the angry beast neared him. He was losing ground against the massive creature. No foot-race was enough. The animal would trample him any moment. Emery squinted and ran at his peak, as fast as his body could move, his intent as if to outrun the season itself. The grass began a steady impediment to his gait and the scabbard beat about his back, bruising and gashing him as he swiftly leaped and ran through the grass of the field.

The grove was too distant. He would not reach safety before the mastodon apprehended him. The sensation of the beast's tonnage, its powerful legs, was overwhelming. It had run him down and was at his back by a mere dozen yards. The young boy jumped and made a mid-air turn, choosing to face his recompense. The motion ceased in a skid of up-tufted dirt about his shoes. There were but yards between two creatures; a giant and boy and twenty-five feet, then eighteen feet, then seven. The monstrous Proboscidean lowered its tusks and lunged forward for the simple, brutal kill.

The lieutenant's firearm had been readied, but required no use. It was with wonder the aged soldier watched from his mount, seeing the talented young man atop the mastodon, riding it toward the grove and stabbing with his saber down, again and again into the meaty nape of the monster. Who had seemed an energetic boy of certain delusion and a quaint sense of servitude to the Confederacy, now appeared the embodiment of bravery and legend. The mastodon was brought to its knees at the grove's edge. A coarse roar escaped the massive lungs as its life fled, as its head lowered and the tusks propped it to stillness, into the final comatose of blood loss. The lieutenant rode into this scene, pulling his reigns back hard and dismounting Lauderdale several feet from the boy and the dying behemoth. Soon, the mastodon whimpered and rolled to its side in the grass, the Sun hot against its hairs and eyes starved of oxygen. Emery stood beside the animal, holding the red-stained saber, much alive and full of cheer.

"Never had to fire a shot," the impressed lieutenant noted.

"Nope. And tonight, we can have a feast," the young boy replied.

"That we can. I saw your skirmish from afar. Stabbed twice before you ran," he said to Emery's smile, "Precocious."

Binghamton's west side held many boys, including Emery's brother, William, and in each of these boys lived the well-scoped constitution of fantasy. That Thomas Welter played his jacks with the rigid ruling of a blackbird's pecks was but style. That Agatha Bilridge enjoyed heady, dark licorice in her ice cream was a wondrous and intimate preference. That Emery preferred the involvement of others in his studies of clubs and programs, festivities and all things student, was hard-won; others could be cruel. Social youth in Binghamton was a circus wherein fantasy and style met reality and the ever-present complexity of growing up. Children shared the blocks and park, the dogs and radio programs. There was very little that a young boy did not share, particularly if that boy had a brother.

Even Emery's birthday was not solely his own. He had to share his birthday with Christmas itself, though only one of these celebrations was endeavored in the Asher house. Outside however, Christmas was always a large event that pleased children, his friends, schoolmates, and even a few adults. Emery had grown accustomed to the multi-functional in both festivity and company. When children ran about the block on Christmas day with their new bicycles and various toys and trinkets, he liked to imagine they were celebrating his birthday.

Each young man or woman held a fondness for certain details and matters. His brother William worked the year's elements at schooling, and perched behind his thick glasses was a stare at times cold and bookish. The sod of Binghamton was richly topped with structures and the changes of sky and floor with the seasons. The world became cold with the snow and its call for thick clothing, warm with the summer and out-of-school activity, and wet the rest of the year's days. Each season sparked a particularly distinctive feeling of warmth or shivers, comfort or dampness, adventure outside or hiding inside from the sky.

Long ago, New York had been the land of mastodons. They left their fossils in Queens and Manhattan. In Binghamton and Cayuga. No citizen had ever hunted the stately beast until now. Only Emery and his companion in the Confederacy. A mastodon had no fondness for certain details and matters. Not like children. It was quarry, and already grown up. Simple and unchanging. No mastodon had ever been President of Binghamton junior high school. No mastodon had ever celebrated a birthday or Christmas.

Standing in the field near Cayuga Lake, on vacation for but a week of the summer, Emery's hunt now only chilled him and offered a sobering trill through his mind. The warm kill at his feet, so unwieldy and replenishing, was no longer something of which he might be proud. The downed animal was neither the triumph of man over beast nor the fruition of a weapon's clamor against life, but instead presented itself as stunning proof of nature's coldness, her invasive and grave-hungry truth that the largest of monsters could be killed by something as simple as a child's ingenuity.

"You look displeased, my boy."

"Well, it's just dead now. It's not great anymore," Emery said.

Of course there was Paige. Back home. Another Binger. A little girl of such temerity that she often followed him about on school grounds questioning his adventures, each detail and unlikelihood. A pretty killjoy in pigtails with notebook and pencil. There could be triumph there, at least, as she heard out his adventures. When he returned to Binghamton from his family's vacation, he would have a wondrous story for her. One so courageous she would have no choice but to abandon her scrutiny and simply adore him, for once. Riding a mastodon to its perish was much more difficult than riding a high stepper, but the one had trained him for the other, and perhaps he would bring Paige to his father's stable and show her the two horses. One was a dray, but cared for and not yet old. He would demonstrate and reenact the mastodon hunt for Paige. He thought of her often, a new arrangement. Truly, he thought more often about _why_ he thought of her, and had yet come any real conclusion, though his knowledge of heart matters was not lacking and he did understand the impetuousness of that strange fever between boys and girls. It was quite palpable, and Paige seemed the sort of person to impress, he supposed. People like that deserved adventures, even those that were not their own. She would want to write his adventure into her little notebook, of course, but how little her pencil would flutter when she saw his form atop the dray horse. How believable he would be.

The sound hurried across the field from the lake. An irascible and authoritative noise most certainly issued from the lungs of his troll-faced brother.

"EMERY. DINNER."

"IT'S ONLY FOUR."

"IT'S SIX. COME ON."

That no fouler sound could have left a man than that loathsome voice of William's was no assurance against doing what the older brother ordered. William's lecturing, judgmental tone woke Emery some mornings, sent him to lunch, told him about girls, and uncorroborated a great many things Emery felt were true in the world. Mastodons were not real, and William was obliged to flaunt such information. The older brother was entirely incorrect, however; it was William's nature to be wrong, in all ways known to science and logic, and concerning every possible thing. In fact, William was known across Binghamton as having been perpetually wrong for the longest duration any one man had ever been known to be mistaken. The only time William was correct was when repeating the words of the parents.

Emery looked down at his kill, saber in hand, and this view burned into his mind as aching proof of how silly and boring his brother had become over the past year. This felt good to note, and so he kept the thought, making his way across the field toward the lake and vacationing families. Lieutenant Merrill stayed behind, taking back his steel blade and hitching Lauderdale to a walnut tree.

"Another day, my boy," he said to the exiting young man.

Susa brought the popping frankfurters from the cast-iron skillet into the house. The fire, a source of sit-around warmth, was diminishing in the twilight of Cayuga's hills, and the chill of the air had brought the family into the house for dinner. Sitting at the wooden table in the small, rented cabin, the family talked over the day's events and the happenings of their collective vacation. The mustard was fancy and the catsup, watery, but the salt of the frankfurters was more than enough flavor to induce good salivation and the sating of stomachs.

"How about a night fish?" Henry asked his boys.

"In the dark?" Susa asked, her acute, mothering sense having been tripped by the idea of children operating after nine p.m.

"Well sure. We have a lantern, don't we? I'm sure we brought it. And there's good fish in this lake night or day. Not like they can go anywhere."

"I don't want to fish tonight. I want to make a compass," William responded. Henry had a bite of the cylindrical meat and its bread housing, chewed with a nod as he looked on his youngest.

"Well, what about you, Emery? Fish tonight?"

"That'd be fun," Emery agreed, "We'll catch breakfast."

"Please clean them yourselves," Susa commented in mock annoyance.

"And I thought tomorrow we'd go to Taughannock," the father added.

"Oh, I can use my compass there," William said, a nudge of excitement tilting his brows up from their usual place behind the thick, black rim of his glasses.

Susa licked her lips and reached for the pitcher, pouring water into her glass with an articulate wrist. Her mood was pleasant; the lake trip had excited her all the way to smiles. Cayuga was family time, away from the shop and school, away from routine. Being away from the usual mode was helpful to her, no matter how well-meaning the city was for her at home. Binghamton was pleasant, but it was easier to uncover a sense of felicity when there were fewer things to distract her. A person could be quite pleased with life, but not know it through all the weather of occupations and institutions and the street-side, domestic din so common back home.

"I want to go there. To Taughannock. First thing tomorrow," Emery voiced.

"Yeah," William agreed.

"Oh, it really is a lovely park," Susa said, "I enjoy the smell up there."

"Sure, it's nice," Henry said, "Expansive place. Big."

Emery swallowed a bit of his meal and had a small sip of water. After rubbing his eye with a palm and fighting off a bit of weariness, he announced with certainty the adventure of his day.

"I brought down a mastodon today." Henry stopped chewing and lifted his curious eyes. William frowned.

"Oh did you?" the father inquired.

"Couldn't kill it the usual way. Too large. I had to cut its throat."

"Now, Emery," Susa said, a touch reproachful. She noticed that her son's hair was misbehaving in the back and this bothered her. The young boy had his father's hair, mostly, but her uncle's troublesome licks near the whorl.

"Carotid artery. Bled it out," Emery said, mild.

"Huh," Henry muttered, taking in his son.

"Did it with a cavalry sword," the boy continued, "Crept up on it for an hour, so I didn't spook it."

"Say, that was smart of you," the father accommodated.

"I know."

"You ran around in the field like a moron," William voiced then, "I watched you do it." The father looked over both of his boys and had another bite. Through this mouthful of nitrated pork and breading, he asked a simple question.

"Well, which is it, Em? Did you hunt a mastodon, or run around like a moron?"

"Moron," William chose.

"William, stop it," their mother said. Emery set his frankfurter on the small plate and folded his arms across his chest. He had no need to answer, and knew which he had been.

The importance of his day thus spent now occluded into the more familial importance of a night well spent. This came, the late night, and there was fishing to do, and tomorrow, Taughannock. That a tour of the state park might please his parents and brother was only a secondary objective. Emery's true mission was to keep them safe from the roving samurai that had made their encampments shortly out of view of the main trails. The armor placement on these foes made them a particular nuisance, even for a man as submerged in the tactics of war as Lieutenant Merrill.

Susa reached into her handbag and retrieved a steel comb, set it beside her youngest son's plate. The silvery tines loomed as if filaments, undulating like the legs of a centipede. The comb arched its back then and inched toward his hand.

"Sticking up in the back," his mother said.
**Chapter Two**

North High School was a matryoshka. Dolls within dolls. First the outer layer of street and yard, parking and brush. The father. Once lifted free, there was but the structure, cube-like with an awning and sheer supports in the face. The mother. When this was lifted, thrown aside, there was yet a smaller layer, hallways and rooms bustling with talk and worry. The school's brood in the school's image. Removing this gave one a row of lockers, each pregnant with the relics of education and personal need, and within these were the smallest dolls, the Micro-men, propped up and bolted back into the hind-wall of each locker, small men made of steel with penny slots and sage eyes. They were babies in the matryoshka. They were wise machines and each young boy or girl was assigned one. A student would open a locker, choose whatever book was needed for the next class, and if there was need and a penny, they would face and activate their Micro-man. That student would have made it to the center of the North High matryoshka, to the smallest doll, and now might incur the most expensive, inner-sanctum wisdom of the school.

Emery glanced over his Micro-man, which was humanoid in shape and consisted of various cogs and clothed wiring, a press-plate atop its head and a slot for copper currency in its open, tin hand. He drew his day's penny from his pocket and, debating what else he might use if for, resigned himself to a bout of wisdom. The penny was placed in the tin hand, and the coin began down the narrow groove in the arm, scraping and rolling along until finally dropping into the steel gut of the machine. There was a puff of exhaust as the mouth of Emery's assigned Micro-man opened and the word came out.

"Question?" asked the voice, metallic and fuzzed with the close-quarters of locker walls.

"Hello dwarf. I need advice about a girl."

Near him, another young man shut his own locker and glanced over at Emery, having heard the question.

"That doesn't work, you know. All they know is fact," the other student said.

"Mine's different. Bashed it with a brick last term. Thinks it knows everything now and it tries to answer. Can't say 'no' anymore," Emery replied.

"You should get it fixed, then."

The young man left for his class and was quickly replaced by another young student at another nearby locker. They came and went.

"Question?" the Micro-man repeated. Emery lowered his voice and leaned closer to the mechanical figure.

"It's Paige Girdwood. What do you know about her? I want to take her to the promenade. She likes Hugh Karcher. I want her to like me, instead."

The Micro-man whirred to life and a brief light shot from its ears. The cogs within turned and a scent of ozone wafted from Emery's locker. The familiar smell of gaining an answer. The sounds of machinery tapered into a dull rattle and the Micro-man spoke.

"The name is English. Paige: Attendant. Servicer of homes or nobles."

"Sure. How do I get her to like me, instead of liking Hugh?" There was no response, however. Emery sighed and reached into his pocket, inserted another penny into the tin hand, watched it roll into the machine.

"Question?" the factoid golem asked.

"How do I get Paige Girdwood to like _me_ instead of Hugh Karcher?" Clicks and whirrs. A tussle of smoke across metal that drifted from the locker and dissipated upward.

"An attendant's respect calls good faith and fondness," the Micro-man replied.

"So... I should get her respect? And that'll give her good faith in me, and fondness?" No answer. Penny. Insert.

"Question?"

"If I get Paige Girdwood's respect, she'll have faith in me and be fond of me?" Emery asked.

"She'll attend a home or noble," the machine repeated.

"But I'm only in high school, dwarf. I'm just a normal citizen. I live in my parents' home." Penny. Insert. Annoyance.

"Question?"

"How do I get to be noble?"

"Show your value, station, or courage as being worthy of attendance."

"I have no value, dwarf. My station is... it's not much. And I'm not courageous."

"Ignoble," the Micro-man added, giving a free correction. These were rare.

"I'll throw you out with the trash," Emery said, inserting another penny. It rolled down the arm and clanked into the gut bin with the others. This coin-scratched digestive tract was beginning to sound somewhat full. Emery was running out of pennies.

"Question?"

"Listen to me: I want to know _how_ to be what she's looking for. I can't raise my station yet, so how would I go about maybe getting some value and showing the courage thing you told me?"

"Value: Be needed. Courage: Show no fear."

"Well, that's kind of a stretch. What could she possibly need from me? And what the hell am I supposed to show no fear about?" No answer without more money.

"You're useless. Give me my pennies back."

The route of mathematics was steep in the wonders of numerical alchemy. That the stately number ten might stomp the guts from a six by simply being more easily used was a sort of blessing. The metric system seemed to discern this, but the system he knew the more was not so fond of tens being hundreds being thousands. It preferred pounds into tons and inches into miles. These were strange affairs, but seemed crucial in any industry he might enter.

Emery inched toward class with a defeated, ninety-five pound posture and the robust sense of being unfairly smitten. How many liters made up Paige Girdwood? It felt as if a mile passed beneath his shoes while walking the hallway. 5,280 feet of thought. Which were sixty-some-odd-thousand inches. If he were to write down every instance of thinking about Paige Girdwood over the last two terms, that barely countable number would bear an exponent. Converted to a percent, would this amount of thinking dedicated to the incredibly fetching nature of her come close to equaling ten percent of his conscious time in thought? Or a more Gregorian six minutes of each hour? Paige thought he was a twit. He might have been. As he walked toward his next class, the weight of his ruminations bore a full ton, but he had no time to think over these things: A bell rang across the air like the icy squeal of an angry cornet. Emergency. Emergency. He was exactly late.

Hugh Karcher sat in the next row, two seats closer to the front. He just undulated there, his troll flesh roiled in pits on his face that some foolishly called dimples. The cleft in his chin was as if someone had placed a nail there. His idealized frame was simply given to him and the rudimentary ability of catching a rotund little ball had caused Hugh (often referred to as 'The Karch') to possess a certain value among staff and other boys alike. And girls. That Emery had been denied varsity this year, in favor of the larger and yet lither, new quarterback, was a mild treachery, but did cause him to envy those who had again made the team. Hugh should have been halfback. Emery should have been handing off to the horned troll with knotted hands, not sourly pitting himself against the boy for a girl that preferred Brawns over Ichabods.

The day of classes spanned the destruction of Carthage and the geometric intrigue of quatrefoils, to his brief mulling over of Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_ aloud during class discussion. This synopsis was met with yawns and disagreement. In his next-to-last class, Emery's proximity to sleep during reflections on the common use of bicarbonates brought him tight-rope close to being officially disciplined. He had, in his final class for the day, whacked a baseball quite far, and this had caused his mood to fetter upward a bit, so the day was not an entire loss. As he packed at his locker, ready to go home, the Micro-man did aid in reminding him to study his economics for the following day's test, gratis, fulfilling its only payment-free function. Some things worked out well enough, he supposed, even if what you wanted most did not.

FADE OUT

While distilleries are now producing alcohol for the war, Landers Royal is still available, and sold only from our pre-war reserves. The Royal Reserve holds an aged and smooth taste in every bottle. If you enjoy your Landers Royal in moderation, there's enough to go around as long as the war lasts. Landers Royal Reserve. Our distilleries are providing for the boys overseas, but we're saving the best reserve for you. When you want whiskey, why, you want Landers.

FADE IN

As school began to empty, young women and men exiting through the outer layer of campus, the girls awaiting parents and the men exiting to their walks home or, in rarity, cars, Emery found Paige near her locker. She was engaged in talk with Hugh, of course, and this young man was holding her books and leaning against the wall in an assured manner as she rummaged in her locker for some item or two. Emery walked into their midst like a ship's bow ploughing through two squid attempting to mate.

"What's buzzin', cousin?" he asked.

"Oh... hi," Paige responded. The Karch raised an eyebrow, a bit agitated at the intrusion.

"I don't mean to interrupt, uh, but you see I have a tiny man that lives in my locker, and he told me that I'm quite fond of you, and I wanted to briefly ask if you might let me accompany you to the prom," Emery said. Maybe he had ideas about courage and being noble, or else he was simply the sort that exposed things once he deemed they were taking up too much of his thought. Why hide an important thing? For better or worse, Emery was an insolent or concluding sort of person.

"Hey, hey, back off, Asher. I just asked her that," Hugh said.

"A man in your locker?" Paige asked, intrigued.

"Sorry Hugh, and yes, Paige, he gives me advice in exchange for a penny. Asking his two cents costs me one."

"Emery... you can be off-putting sometimes," Paige responded, but this was said with her eyes in the mode used to create half a smile.

"I'm not kidding, half portion. Don't you have an article to write or something? Get lost," Hugh continued, ignoring Emery's odd statement.

"I do have an article to write, but that can wait. You say you just asked Paige to the prom? That's great news, Hugh, and I do hope it goes well for you," Emery said, feigning good nature.

"Scram, Asher."

"Oh I will, but you should know, I'm still asking Paige to the prom, too. If there's anything we've learned from Mr. Dahl's economics, it's that all good business needs competition. Good for us."

"You're funny, Emery," Paige said. The word 'funny' had a bit of a negative focus put on it, however.

"Yeah, he's funny all right," Hugh agreed in a frown.

"Well, thank you both."

"Okay, you had your laugh. Now go on," Hugh said, trying to affect a slight cheer through the layers of nuisance Emery had caused him.

"I can't, Hugh" Emery replied, "See, I already asked. Surely, you can see that it would be rude not to hear her answer. It's basic courtship diplomacy."

"Well, she hasn't answered _me_ yet. And I asked first. You'll have to get your answer later. It'll be 'no'."

"All right, that's only fair, but things like 'yes' and 'no' are quick to say, of course, so I'll just wait and get the rejection over with. Paige?"

Emery stood there, waiting. Hugh pointed toward the end of the hallway and stared at Emery, a serious look in his eyes. When Emery simply nodded and smiled, playing dumb, Hugh shook his head and turned his focus to Paige.

"I'm gonna lose my temper. Tell him to leave."

"Okay," she said. Paige had known Emery for quite some time. They had once written stories together for school, and then beyond that assignment, he had spent many years somewhat impressing her with little fantasies. She preferred not to like him as much as she did.

"You'll have to leave, Emery," she said.

"Oh, no need to mind me. You two go on with your discussion. I'll be quiet. I have the patience virtue. It's not as good as most other virtues, but Macy's always has it in stock and it's very affordable, so I have a lot of it," Emery said. Paige put a quick lid on her mirth, which wanted to manifest in the physical.

"You want me to black your eye?" Hugh asked.

"That depends on which one." Hugh seemed to like this reply very much.

"Both."

Emery was a bit frightened then. He had known that the impulsive nature of his sudden approach would be troublesome, especially because it would infringe upon the attention Hugh Karcher was receiving. Though Emery's presence had been tolerated thus far, he wasn't entirely certain it would end without a row. It seemed nearly assured, now, and Emery's size was minute. In that particular vein, were one to view it in simple mathematics, Hugh's physique was almost totally comprised of tens, and Emery's was a hodgepodge of random odd numbers closer to the deuce than royalty. Perhaps Emery needed to vacate, as asked.

"Look now, you boys calm down," Paige threw in, trying to intervene.

"You're right, you're right. I'm sorry for intruding," Emery acquiesced. Perhaps he had done enough in introducing his question, and would be best to let her think on it. No need to get battered about by a larger man. Women did not seem to favor that.

"Outta here, crumb. I mean it," Hugh said. Perhaps Emery did not like that a person would shorten the three words 'get out of' into the paltry 'outta'. Perhaps Emery did not like being called a crumb. Perhaps there was the matter of jealousy over his varsity loss. Perhaps, also, Emery was annoyed by Hugh's good fortune to the point he wanted to marginalize Hugh's idiocy and make it come out, in full force, feeling that Paige might not like a more summery show of Hugh's nature.

"Wait, I changed my mind," Emery baited, "You were wrong, after all. I'd like to continue intruding." Emery thought about his eyes then, and which of them Hugh would black first.

"Look Asher, ya can't throw a ball and ya sure can't throw a fist. This is your last chance to make tracks." That had been rude of him to say, though ostensibly correct. Emery did not have the best of throwing arms. The last chance given was a nice offer. Hugh began rolling up his sleeves. The young man's arms were imposing. This was distressing but if there was anything to Emery beyond the oddity of his attitude in most things, it was a driven nature and an almost selfish need to be regarded.

"Paige, would a blacked eye or two ruffle my chances of accompanying you to the prom?"

She rolled her eyes and sighed. She was a little fond of him, and had known him for years, but she did not want Emery to stay and get into a losing fight with Hugh, a boy for whom she was also fond.

"Honestly, Emery, you're too much," she said.

"Oh, he's a real card. Right, Asher? Always a character? Great fun. But see I don't like characters, and I don't like you. At all. I don't like your looks, I don't like your attitude, and I don't like your arrogant articles in my school newspaper. They're bad and you're a louse," The Karch said.

"An autograph? No, I... I couldn't do that."

"I think I've had about all of this I care to," Hugh said, grabbing Emery's shirt and pushing him flat against the lockers. The jarring of the row caused the Micro-man in Paige's locker to activate.

"The largest bundle of nerves in the human face is submerged behind the philtrum, along the upper lip," the Micro-man buzzed. Hugh articulated his arm to pummel this particular bundle of Emery's nerves. How unfair. Emery's Micro-man so seldom gave freebies. The fist struck hard. Emery turned within a bright, orange flash that confused him greatly.

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. NORTH HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL FIELD - AFTERNOON

A typical football field with bleachers on either side. There is a practice session happening between many student players and two coaches.

LONG SHOT of The home-team bleachers, TWO PEOPLE sitting on them near the middle.

SLOW ZOOM TO:

The two occupants, PAIGE and EMERY. Sitting and talking on the bleachers. The wind is picking up and we can hear the varsity football team practicing on the field.

PAIGE:

So, do you remember when you had me come to your father's stable so you could pose on that horse? Wanting me to write about it for class?

CUT TO:

That. A strange and childish thing suitable for a brazen boy. He had been this in droves and perhaps still was that childish boy.

"That was just dumb," he laughed, "I had this idea that you'd be impressed. Chronicle my adventures."

"Well, it was silly, yes. I thought you were kind of crazy. Are you still hunting dinosaurs and fighting the good fight?"

"No, I'm on to sniping Nazis now," he said, though this was untrue. Mostly he imagined his way to girls and making the varsity team, two things he had expended much energy trying to make happen in the recent past, things that had not happened.

"You should chronicle your own adventures, sometime," she said.

"Diaries are for girls," he replied.

"My brother keeps one."

"Huh."

"And I didn't mean a diary. Not like that. I meant stories. So you could write about being a sniper that gets the Nazis. Or whatever else goes on in that head of yours. Like for books. Or you could write for the radio."

Hugh Karcher, then running drills with the team below, had ceased looking at them, for now. His status as an active player for the team was not jeopardized so long as he behaved. Emery held a minor guilt over this predicament, as his own behavior had been impulsive, rude, and rash, which had caused Hugh to act honestly to those things. There was a bit of shame in Emery that in gaining Paige's favor, he had inadvertently caused much more dislike from Hugh than he had originally thought would result. Had he reported the fight, Karcher might have had trouble from Coach Hertz. That would have been unfair.

That Emery and Paige then sat on bleachers within view of Karcher had been her idea. Emery had begun to understand that certain sorts of trouble invigorated her. Emery was uncomfortable hovering near The Karch as they were; it seemed like rubbing it in that Hugh had lost her favor in punching him, something Emery had caused to happen with a certain chiseling.

"The Nazis are really scary," she said then. This was abrupt. He looked at her and nodded.

"Yeah, to everyone," he agreed, "They're out of hand. Like wolves. And the Japanese are running along side."

"Almost everyone is being taken off to fight. You will, too," she said then. Her concern lifted his spirits, until he accidentally lowered them again with his next statement.

"Well, it's the right thing," he said, mortified with himself for uttering this, "and we have to help do something about them." His stomach turned, however. He felt as if he were stating it was all right to eat your dead if you were hungry enough. This was not right, just a thing that could be. United States involvement in Europe and was not a thing one could call right or wrong, but rather a thing that simply had come to be, and was now inescapable.

"It's so brave to be like that. To not be scared about it. I can't imagine what it would be like to fight over there. Courageous."

"I suppose so."

"But would you enlist even if you don't get drafted?"

He thought this over. In his mind, he heard the words of the Micro-man echo and gain ballast. Nobility. Need. Showing no fear.

"I've applied to a few colleges, but if I had to, I'd enlist, sure," he fibbed, "I'm not afraid of enlisting. They need us." He had no intention of ever doing any such thing, however.

"There's something funny about you, Emery."

"Oh?"

"You keep me guessing."

"Sure, I guess. But fighting for your country is... well, it's noble."

"I like guessing about you."

"Yeah?"

"Yes, but don't get thick about it. I only like it a little," she said.

"Well, I don't assume I'll be asked to go, or that they'll want anyone soon. This war is going to end any day now. The Germans are falling apart. We'll take Japan apart any second now. I'd be surprised if it lasted another month."

Paige agreed to join him for the upcoming prom. He had not been certain she would want to go with him, and had been operating on a rather slim diet of juvenile hope. The war had been present for some time, but the worst seemed past, and unlike those seniors he knew the previous year, he was not in a panic about the draft, nor the plausibility of his ending up in the fray, himself. William, his older brother, had been able to use his status as a political writer and fact-checker for the Washington governor to keep himself out of the war, and the value of a powerful friend or two was tantamount his continuing security. Emery did not have these connections, aside from his brother, who had little clout, but time would be Emery's compatriot, as the draft would in all probability be rescinded by the time his graduation came about. He was free to enjoy his youth somewhat, to have a lively, smart date for the prom, to watch the games and try and do what it was boys his age were asked when there wasn't a war on: Plan a life, pick a career, choose a school, fall in love, even make his own enemies, instead of being given them.

"You think I could write for the radio?" he asked.

"You're creative. You could figure it out, I bet. If I can write, so could you. I want to write for the _Home Journal_. You'll have to find your own rag, though. Men don't write for the _Home Journal_."

"My mom reads that. I think I want to teach kids. Be a coach, like Hertz."

"For football?"

"Well, more than that. An instructor. Physical education. But a coach, too, sure."

"I see. Honestly, I thought you had to have more warts to be a coach."

"I'll grow them."

"The one by his eyelid bothers me," she said then, her shoulders giving a shudder.

"You're right, I'll need more warts, I think. Maybe a boil or two. I'm sure I can pick a few of those up along the way."

"Or you could get some smarts, and do something else entirely."

He gave a false chuckle and let a slight frown escape, careful not to let her see this. The moment curdled and he stopped talking about the future. She did not approve of his, and he knew, prom or not, that he would not be a part of hers. Still, he felt he had waged a thing, and it had gone in his favor, and for the first time in his life, approaching a girl had not ended at the initial stage. Over the next weeks, war or not, Hugh or not, and even in the light of Paige's newly developing loss of interest in him, he still felt good about things, and by the end of each hour, he fell a little further into the hue of pleasantry.
**Chapter Three**

OPENING CREDITS, NARRATION.

TITLECARD: THE WAR

FADE TO:

EXT. A DOUGLAS C-47 SKYTRAIN IN FLIGHT, 1944 - NIGHT

Rain against an uncertain, dark backdrop, flash of lightning in the distance. We see the plane in turbulence, bearing forward at great speed. The frame is shuddering.

CUT TO:

INT. THE SAME SKYTRAIN – SAME TIME

LONG ANGLE from COCKPIT through the noticeably nervous 511TH PARACHUTE INFANTRY REGIMENT. Among these men we see SOLDIER ASHER.

IN FROM LEFT steps HOST ASHER, looking out of place in a black suit, to CENTER, BEGINNING INTRODUCTORY MONOLOGUE. He is introducing a scene in which his younger, soldier self is to take part:

HOST ASHER:

Please bear witness to one Emery Asher, all-American young man in the service of his country, a soldier in a terrible war that has encompassed much of the world. While most people would be horrified at the thought of plunging from a soaring airplane, young Asher makes a habit of it. He drops into a bullseye of the enemy's den with a rifle and a prayer. In just a moment, Private Asher will earn his nation's Purple Heart. An award for being wounded, but this injury, physical upon first examination, will be eclipsed by a far deeper wound, a sense of dread that will forever return to him in nightmares, straight from the murk of his most unmentionable fears, a heart-stuttering panic lodged in his own memory, across continents, oceans, and even time itself, all the way from _The Other Side_.

ZOOM TO:

SOLDIER ASHER in M1942 paratrooper uniform. He is fidgeting with his cargo snaps. LIEUTENANT MERRILL OF THE CONFEDERACY walks among the young squad, his medals jangling and saber strapped to his hip, orating to his men and preparing them for the jump.

FADE TO:

Boots polished to regulation appeasement, though for so little reason. Cargo pockets with bellows, some of them empty. Two snaps for each pocket and four pockets to a coat. More of them on the pants. Emery grunted and tried to center himself. This was an incessant activity in which he only made ground for seconds at a time. He let his snaps be and waited, trying to clear his mind. This was not a minor task, and he failed. In not half a minute, or near in thought a month, his fingers woke and he found himself checking his snaps again. The plane dipped in the uncertain, troubled weather, toward the ever-approaching, unknown event below, matching well the devolving mood of the men on board. Unlike the spirits of the paratroopers, however, the plane shortly rose again.

"Thirteen eyes. Check 'em. And tuck the pants; we wanna keep sharp," Lieutenant Merrill shouted over the din of the engines. His saber's scabbard tapped against a young man who leaned back on the bench to avoid its further intrusion on his fear-based meditation.

The young men glanced at one another's drab, olive boots, laced to the top and tight. Pants tucked into the upper cuff. Nervous eyes noting secure gear, most men with haversacks, three with Musette bags, then the eyes found one another, the absence of their earlier bolstering and jags with the onset of flight in a Pacific downpour. Their thoughts had turned to the streaking of their machine across the wavering sky, knowing that they would lose even the familiarity of this to the night in but minutes.

Merrill stroked his mustache into his beard, adjusted his cavalry hat and patted his Colt pistol. The soldiers needed his orders and assurances to keep from the inevitable horror of what they were about to do. All had jumped before, most more than once, but this next was a drop into a certain sort of pit, a place hot with enemies. There was no question as to whether combat would occur, or how many axis soldiers they might be facing, as with some previous jumps. This fight was already in place and they were being thrown out to fall at its side. They had been prepped on the terrain before, on maneuvers into Leyte, should there be a need. Now there was. Leyte, where the enemy's cover was a sprawl of choice hiding spots.

Merrill cleared his throat and functioned as per his reliable nature, shouting and ordering the small things to light, barking and grumbling into the sound of the engines, keeping young, panicky hands occupied and moving.

"Strap your gear and get it snug. Might be a Skytrain but we don't check bags here. That's your life you're wearin', boys, so get it on tight."

It had been a solemn sip from a disposable cup. The graduating class of North High School but two years back and their brief ceremony. The lemonade had been a mild taste; too watery. He had a few hours mostly free in adulthood before walking off to the yard, catching that grave and jittery train to the induction center. Most students had received a draft card. These bits of command were the same size as a high school diploma. One could cover the other. Emery had enlisted, however, on a delay through graduation. He had been told to wear his uniform to graduation, as it had been sent to him after enlisting. He had done so, and this uniform had caused him to be somewhat adamant about the war. A few conversations had resulted and soured him in the eyes of certain schoolmates, and at least one of his teachers. Emery had lost a few friends due to his overbearing decrees that draftees stop complaining. He said "buck up," and Mr. Barnes had given him a look of strong reproach. Emery had become arrogant and terminal in thought, it seemed.

He was short, 5'4", and while he assumed he would grow a bit more through his senior year in high school, this did not seem to have occurred. His body had jerked and wobbled from the train's slow movement down the tracks through town, his one-hundred and eighteen pounds keeping him from steadiness as the pride and fright of those boys around him chattered endlessly about their various, semi-informed plans, their tricks, ways to get at the nips and krauts, be heroic, or else stay smart and stay safe. Most were draftees. He knew the sort of job he wanted, if allowed to choose once at the induction center. The bold sort that would make him something of a daredevil. He wanted to box and he wanted to be a paratrooper. He could do those things. War changed everything. Not being chosen for the varsity team meant little once he stepped on that induction train. The true varsity team, the national one, was now ahead of him, and he would be on that team.

Emery had sat there on the sleek train, waiting. More boys came. Some he knew, fellow Northers, but others were cross-town rivals from Central. Emery supposed that particular rivalry, one so common between schools in like districts, was of no meaning anymore but for children still in school and old men that romanticized place and belonging. To the boys on the train, there was only slight room for squabbles of neighborhood or who won which match against whom. A larger rivalry had erupted throughout Europe.

They had served lemonade. Insignificant, bland lemonade in cups, set on the school's best silver as some sort of basic congratulation, but this was to be tasted by boys soon off to places of volatile expiry. A girl had kissed him, after kissing two other boys. Just because. She had said "Congratulations! Be safe, Em." He had never met her before. She didn't even look familiar. Lemonade and a diploma. A kiss. Thirty minutes to ponder these things and then time was up. These were no congratulations, but failed and wholly unspoken attempts at consolation. His diploma felt like an apology. He was far west or east of that place now. From Cayuga. From his nation. He had been carried on the backs of flying oxen from his junior high presidency. From the scouts and his degree of servitude, from William and Paige, from his parents, house, from girls and horses and even lemonade.

The train doors were closed in Binghamton. Parents and family waved goodbye, most distraught and a few shouting with worry, fewer with pride. When the train whistled its departure, military police stood tall in the aisles, watching over each car. These were not welcoming authorities, but as if great cats with lowered ears. Emery had watched with a sense of doubt as the doors to his train car, already closed and latched, were then padlocked from the outside. As the train slowly rode forward, taking him from home and into the military, he resigned himself to trying not to think about the padlocks, what they meant on the outside of the doors like that. Not an hour had passed since lemonade at graduation. His father and mother were driving home at that moment, no doubt with his mother holding the diploma. They were possibly talking about him, just as they had talked about William when he left town several years prior. Perhaps his mother was crying a little, like she had then.

The train had continued for two years. The jostling floors and seats, the tense patrol of sentries and jabberers, and the always changing view. He had boxed, attempting to focus his mind on something remotely recreational, yet productive. He did well, though there were few in his weight class, slight as it was. There was little for him to do outside of his training and orders, and he had no interest in playing a musical instrument. Emery had slowly and carefully, over two years of occasional bouts in the lightweight, proven to himself that he was at least worthy of the role into which he had risen. He was a soldier and they called soldiers men. He did things he thought men should do. Some of these things were performed in a panic, while others occurred out of an inability to give in to other people. All of this new world, in uniform or with gloves, atop tracks or winds, with orders and parachutes... all had begun for him with graduation and Binghamton, a different world some 8,700 miles from the train on which he now shook. The train in the sky.

He missed his home terribly. He had been too small, senior year, and was denied the position of quarterback for the varsity team, coach Hertz stating simply that a kid of Emery's size had no place in a skirmish. Now, Emery had been tolerated to fight grown men, in the ring or to the death with a rifle. He was the same size as he had been in high school. There in the graduation ceremony, the voice of Coach Hertz had seemed to loom over his thoughts as if able to drown the oncoming rush of his recruiter's ever-constant shout that he was off to war. Emery was too small. Too small. But not small enough to be left alone, to be disregarded. He was an adult in most of the expected ways. He was old enough and large enough to be snatched up and to take commands, to be given a weapon and taught a few survival skills. There were worse fates for a dreamer.

Basic training and jump school had been grueling. He felt no longer to be a boy, of course, but had not made his way into manhood with a transcending manner, as some often spoke of it. He felt to be in disguise. Perhaps he was a late bloomer, and would develop more physically in the coming years, gain that sense of manhood that made his father responsible and his brother believable. Emery had not come of age in some ceremony or rite of passage. There was no metamorphosis by which he had shirked his boyhood and adopted a place among his fellow man. His was an un-housing by fire or flood, a tragedy of peoples that had dragged him into form. He felt robbed into being a man, not ushered, like a baby shaken hard to keep her from wailing her natural discomfort. It all felt a ruse. He was faking it, a boy in a man's mask, and far sooner than later, he found himself duly terrified.

"Scrape your neck, Asher," Merrill said, his civil war Colt glinting in the holster from the single, dimmed, overhead light of the Skytrain. Emery reached his chest zipper and drew it up the final inch, to the throat. The pinch of cool steel against his apple and the sensation of permanence in a snug fit. He thought briefly of a horse coat, then a strait jacket.

Over the next several minutes his mind uttered obscenities to itself, then braced for the unstoppable maneuver in which he was to take part. That he was one of many, with others beside him and a small, flight-lifted fraternity between these others, had the feel of security. One boy teaching another how to sharpen that Remington knife, others helping one to gain the quartermaster badge, all performing for the scout master, all in youthful, fantastic syncopation, kerchiefs about their small necks and fantasy at their beck and call. And then fantasy was lost. It was time. There was shouting. The blast of wind. The altitude at which the gods looked down on Thebes. The "GO!" and the jaunt and the "GO!" and the breath held and the tip of inertia into one's tight, pounding heart.

"GO!"

The brash sound of a plane, the only real thing, being ripped away by night and drops of frigid water. Again, he was off the world for a time. No one. Cold and shoved to a focus by the thrashes of particle-heavy wind. The sound rushed against his ears as he fell beside droplets that stayed with him for a time as he plummeted down and down and down into the war of animals. He kept his arms wide and eyes drawn tight as their moisture trailed from the edges. A small and inconsequent man with a steel pot on his head, one part Don Quixote for two parts Wile. E. Coyote, having jumped with haphazard from sanity with reliance on orders and a cloth on his back, with a trench knife against his leg, with his body tethered to an M1 rifle, the whole of his pertinent life crammed in a Musette bag and strapped to his bruised, clenched belly as he tumbled toward Earth.

The clothes drew tight so quick it seemed the parachute was designed, upon opening and swallowing the air, to yank the soul straight from the body and loose it to winds. A dramatic explosion of cloth and cord. Slower descent. His troop scattered in elevation about the sky, coming down near him, some not so near. Then the soil. Beloved and needed. The crack of his knees and his teeth smashing together. The boots meeting grass and dirt and then air for a moment as one rolled. He botched his roll and landed hard, but was uninjured after a moment of careful self-scrutiny. Loosing the cords, abandoning the chute, he readied the rifle and slowly moved into a run. He realized with horror that the plans had been off, that the fight had changed over previous minutes, that he had not dropped into the outskirts, near a battle, but directly into it. The thwips of bullets in his direction were all too sudden.

FADE OUT

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FADE IN:

ECU: A young JAPANESE FACE, nervous and breathing heavily. We hold for several seconds before hearing an EXPLOSIVE NOISE and several SOLDIERS shouting in English. The FACE begins looking about quickly, in a panic. We FADE TO BLACK as one of the shouts becomes a SCREAM OF PAIN, LACED WITH PROFANITIES. We hear several words shouted in Japanese, as well.

CUT TO:

INT. MEDIC TENT, TEMP. BASE, LEYTE - EARLY MORNING

The tent is busy and there are many moans, conversations, and occasional exclamations of pain. We see EMERY on a medical cot, one leg exposed and covered with bandages.

PAN TO:

Injury and debilitation. His leg ached; a vicious, sharp pain that bore its way through a fog of muscle cramps and contusions. This bruising had grown, over the hours, into his hip, a now yellow affair with a slow-to-blacken interior. The morphine's reduction of his wits had left him in a state of constant remiss for certain fact. It had been night, but also day. Then most certainly day with the Sun's rise, or it might have been setting. He wanted to ask someone but there were few people around, and when they drew near, he had not been able to speak well enough to ask. The compression against his knee could not be felt but for a numb sort of weight.

The pain had reaved his persona in two. He had been brave yet screaming. Unafraid yet terrified. Well and yet injured. The shrapnel had been removed and the wounds and cuts sewn tight, but the space in which the metal had burrowed was swollen to the point that the burning, foreign steel still felt to be present, alive in him and nestling deep. Moving his leg tested impossible. After his first attempt to feel out the knee, the pain had been so strong that he was now frightened to try again.

He had been given no warning. A sprint across the line of scrimmage. Rifle firing. Infantry that had come from the sky and then he was dizzy and spun aside. Chest to the floor. Closest one could get to the soil. Both pain and the sound of its cause registered in one moment. He could suddenly hear very little. An explosion. Through concussion and a needling ridge of panic through his mind, something outside of him had foraged into him. He was okay. Confused. Okay. Panic. Some regret. He was not okay. Something had happened. Something big. He was dying.

Then he was not dying. A moment to realize. A muted shot nearby, then another. The squad scampering and flanking. All around the mastodon of men. His side was all around him. They were taking the area. A small group of enemies cloistered near the trees, isolated and cocksure. Then shot to death but one, taken for interrogation. Emery had watched from the ground, grinding his teeth and shouting with a closed mouth. Now that he was awake again, and surgically handled, Emery wondered what that man, that young, captured soldier was feeling at this moment. As Emery lay in the hospital with his nerves spiraling into and out of his thoughts, ever waking, was that captive in as much pain? This was likely. What had the world got its boys to do?

"We'll have transport at 0700. They're on their way. Hang in there," the medic said, passing as he often did through the rows of injured, addressing all of them still breathing. Most were minor atrocities. A few were more deathly. Other medics worked in the tent and attended various wounds, in the wave of occasional bellows from those most pained. One man near the tent's entrance would not stop talking. He spoke mostly about his sister. His statements blended into one another, however. He was afraid to stop talking.

The medics returned and administered Emery's opiate. They moved quickly, checking all the fast, uneven work of repairs brought on with each sudden admittance of a man in a certain state. Splints and tourniquets, speedy attempts at transfusion and cutting. Two of them removed bullets and shrapnel solely. A third handled burns. The three medics often treated the same patient. Emery had been ushered here the early a.m., someone holding him beneath the shoulder on the injured side, helping him into the tent. He couldn't remember who had dragged him out of the fight. He assumed someone had; he certainly hadn't walked or crawled on his own, but a form of sleep had taken these memories from him, short and sudden as they likely were.

"Could be worse," a man said in the next bed over. Emery turned his head and viewed the fellow. The man was clutching his left arm, and had the wing badge of a paratrooper, like Emery, but the configuration was altered. Emery looked at it and tried to focus. The man's body came into better view; the badge was a Chaplin variant. Both of the privates had glossy eyes painted in the effects of morphine. Emery attempted a smile, a sort of we're-in-this-together expression. His cheeks and mouth didn't feel right, however. Who knew what expression was coming out? The man had been right, of course. At that moment, things _could_ be far worse. This was what bothered Emery most. For some, 'could be' had already been replaced by a sheet over the face.

There was one such figure two beds to his right. Chance had intervened and rolled Emery's day like dice, twisting him, but leaving him an eleven in the crapshoot. Who would let their life to such chance? The helter-skelter of living or perishing in this place... it was organized lunacy. Skills came into play, but were no insurance against the unpredictable nature of enemy fire or movements. The soldiers in this tent with him, alive or dead, were a furious, ongoing debate between powers that fueled the machinery of their argument with blood. He had lost some. Others had lost all of it.

"Where you from?" the man asked. Emery moved his lips and breathed in the way speech needed, but had trouble with is tongue.

"New York," he finally muttered.

"San Diego," the Chaplin replied.

Emery reached to the floor, cautious only to move his upper body, and not much. His hand touched the floor beside his makeshift bed and he searched beneath the frame's edge, slowly dragging his Musette bag from beneath. Holding his breath, he pulled it onto the bed, toward his chest, but stopped for a moment; there was an instant prickle of awareness in his knee, a spikelet that quickly tipped into a vivid squeal of pain. This caused his eyes and jaw to clench tight. The squelch in his knee, the meaty swelling there having been disserviced by his movement, slowly abated into the blanket of the drug. He quickly exhaled, inhaled, held it again as he pulled the bag, a mild, unavoidable noise escaping his throat. He gently set the pack on his chest and exhaled hard. With a slow caution, Emery drew from the bag's hold several personal effects, one by one. These had earlier, under the guise of a deeper, opiated thought, seemed to him but trinkets. Artifacts from another place. Things from a past not far back and yet so distant as to be unreal. He was coming out of that, however.

The military was not lonely. He had been surprised by this. There was much socializing and there were cliques. War, frightening and soul-burning at the outset, to his shock had proven an easy thing. This was in the moment, however. The moment was doing one's job. On orders that kept one at function. Point A to point B, with a few tasks along the way. He had angered other soldiers, and was considered by one of his sergeants to be a liability. They had already threatened tossing him into a demolition squad if he didn't shape up. He thought he had, but things kept happening. Occasionally, something unexpected would occur between points, and one fell back on various actions defined by context, but well-studied and memorized actions. You were afraid, but did the one thing next on the now altered list. The troublesome part was when you stopped moving, when you were removed from orders, for even a minute, and for whatever reason the evil of chance decided to use. One became aloof. Uncertain. Without order. Emery had reacted badly in these circumstances, it seemed. There had been complaints.

"Who you with?" the man asked.

"511th Parachute Infantry. You?"

"Same game, different plane. Dropped in up the coast."

While the confusion of being at bay, even slight, caused a tremor in one's mind, the uncertainty was perhaps the worst feeling next to the certainty that all had gone wrong. It was stopping a swift car in a sudden way, simple to complete until the wheels caught and the vehicle fulfilled its cease in a violent lurch. That was when your skull reached into the windshield. When momentum caught, and the truth of the matter overcame you: Your life and all that it contained was at the mercy of forces you did not understand. Not like life, a force which defied understanding, but like death, the force that twisted into every thing that could end, and with only the rarest warning. He was accused of not being able to see the big picture, of having his head in the clouds. He had to stop to breathe, to clear his thoughts often, or he grew... stupid. He would begin making mistakes. Stopping to clear his head felt like death, however, and only served him the time to better feel that ever-present sense of fear. This emotion was everywhere and came over a man in staunch, innumerable ways. He had to choose between feeling terror and falling to stupidity. It was a rough call, most days.

"Think they'll be sending us home?" the private with the bloody arm asked. Emery didn't answer. They might. One of the medics approached and began talking to the injured Chaplin.

"Murphy, Ronald J?"

"Yeah, that's me."

"How's that arm feeling, private?"

"Applesauce."

"Good. I'll need you to let go of it so I can take another look."

"No, just leave me be. It's fine."

"I still need to look."

"It's fine."

His father's posture in the picture was odd. A strange expression from the camera catching them a moment earlier than anticipated. A goofy-looking I'm-a-man leaning near his me-too son. The son's uniform was ironed and clean, regal yet ready. His father in the usual dress, suit performing the image Emery knew best. They had taken the picture in the afternoon, an hour before the high school graduation ceremony. It was the first time Emery had put on his uniform. His father seemed confused by the situation of war, and didn't speak much once Emery put on the uniform. Henry Asher did dress up, however, and he posed for the picture, hair slicked back and chin high, mouth down-turned and eyes tired.

"I'm sorry, but we'll have to take this off."

"Get away from me. I can still move it," the Chaplin jumper said.

Two years had passed. The son missed his father greatly. Emery's hair in the picture, beneath his garrison cap, was as black as his father's. But high school eyes. An adopted pose of bring-on-the-war and the unprofitable look of a tough act, mostly with girls in mind. What would his father think of him returning before his tour was complete? Certainly pride. Respect. But possibly doubt. The injury was severe, yet seemed by its look mild. Tertiary. Not a man-stopper, not at all, just painful. There would be those who might suspect him cowardly. He might have been, at times, unaccountable, but never cowardly. Perhaps he would be best to develop a fist for these sorts, if the knee sent him home. Thus far, the injury seemed intent on doing so.

"It has to be done."

"You go cut your own balls off. This arm's straight; I'm movin' it just fine. See? So you all get away from me, now. Go on. Leave me be. Fuckin' butchers."

Soon Emery would be helped onto a truck bound for the airfield, and a flight to a proper surgeon who might have time to take a more dedicated look around in a soldier's knee. Emery would be fine, and said this to himself. He wanted to say this to others present, to the Chaplin in the next bed, explain that they would also be fine, but knew this was not probable. Some would not be fine. The Chaplin was about to have his arm taken off. Across the tent, a man turned over and clutched at his stomach. Maybe from a bayonet. He had nothing left to retch, and so the sound of his doing so was brazen and hollow and animal-like. Outside, the Pacific downpour continued, seeping its thick moisture and humidity into the tent fabric, into the clothing and minds of all present, their lungs and even their complexions. Was he done here? Had his lot in this war drawn its straw, and had the length of it truly come out long?

"Private Asher," he heard from his left, out of sight. A turn of the head showed him who he knew by voice to be Lieutenant Merrill. The aged man held his riding strop and the clasp of his holster had been left open in the rush of the morning's events. The two met eyes and the Confederate lieutenant adopted a look of recognition, approaching. His medals popped from his chest as he moved and looked like jewelry in the dim light of the tent. They seemed almost effeminate. Emery noted these achievements as Merrill approached. The rhombus Pacific Theater Award for Leadership. A Confederate Medal for Courage and the cherished Southern Cross. Joining these at the forefront of his breast was the Medal of Honor. Though his boots were muddy and shins torn, the scabbard of his saber was polished to a high sheen, and had likely been cleaned not minutes previous. Merrill was a man of distinguished bearing. A man who chose to look good when he fought. Emery lifted his arm and gave salute, which felt a bit off and unpracticed while lying horizontally.

"Oh please," the lieutenant said with a wave of his hand, "At ease, son. While I'm pleased to be saluted, I don't much enjoy or deserve it coming from a sick bed. Came to see how things are."

"Oh, I-"

"I know; the injury's bad."

"Right. Thank you, sir. I- I can't jump or run infantry; my knee is pulp."

"What?"

"So the knee, huh? Well, that's a raw deal. You did all right last night. Thought you were catching up."

"I'm sorry, sir. I hope we get something good out of that Jap we caught. At the least make all these injuries worth it," Emery said, gesturing toward the rows of men in the tent.

Merrill had a moment of thought, leaning back to gauge what he had heard. He seemed puzzled but cautious.

"Do you mean the worth of these men to the war effort, or that injury's worth to you?"

"Well... I suppose both, sir." Merrill frowned.

"I see; you get hurt and turn like bad milk. You're a fool, Asher. They're all worth it. Every one. And don't go feeling pity for yourself. It's womanly."

"No, sir. Of course not," Emery said. He hadn't meant to offend.

"You're a soldier and you got off easy. This is better than it used to be. I've been here since the start. Lot of men lost things last night, Asher. Not just you. They lost limbs. Lives. Those damn, dirty nips shot my Lauderdale."

The ex-confederate fighter's thumb began to stroke the riding crop in his hand as he looked down at this tool in a troubled way.

"...had to finish the poor girl off myself," he said, exhaling slowly before his resolve flashed him up again, "Conflict is an impatient bitch, Asher. But she's the place for injury. And worse: She's where it _belongs_. Everything's worth everything. Better get used to that."

"I didn't mean... Sir, I- I _am_ proud to serve. Defend the world against the Axis. The Germans and Japs... it... it's important, I know. I don't doubt that at all. We just got off on the wrong foot for a moment." But Emery did doubt it, very much.

"The wrong foot," Merrill repeated.

"Yes, sir. I agree with everything you're saying. I know about honor. I know what it is." Emery glanced at the achievements that littered Merrill's chest then, distracted. The lieutenant, having been a cavalry officer in the Civil War, and having served in both World Wars, noticed Emery's distraction and ran his hands over his various medals and patches, his awards and congressional notices. What an American Merrill had been, always doing his part. The adornments brocaded his chest and noised as he frisked them. His eyes grew dull.

"Do you respect these, private? These... honors?"

"Of course, sir," Emery replied, a brief pain in his knee striking against his focus.

"Oh, wake up, boy. The South loses at the end. Ain't you read the books? Grant and his goddamned union. America and every Axis asshole who ever shot a round? The only honor is life. We don't hunt our enemies here, they hunt us. They hunt our life. This is no fantasy and you haven't really been here for most of it."

"I didn't mean—"

"Be thankful you didn't lose more than your mobility. A crumpled knee puts you at a desk. That's easy street. You'll be far away from this goddamned place. You should thank God above for not popping one through your brain out there."

Perhaps from injury, exhaustion, the opiate, or else exasperation at having been brought to this moment without his true consent, Emery heated. His temper lifted him and filled his thought with honesty and ire.

"Sir, to tell you the truth, it's just humans trying to kill one another over land. It's been going on since the start. I wouldn't pin it on a God. That guy two beds down did and they closed his lids for him. Fellow next to me is getting his arm taken away. He's a Chaplin, one of God's own, personal servants. How can there even be such a thing when wars like this happen? Hitler believes in God, too." Merrill's eyes widened at this. He was uncertain what the young private had meant to say, but whatever it was, an argument had begun. Merrill felt potent with such things.

"Explain that," the lieutenant said, cold.

"How can different factions and sides in a war all think they're guided by the same god? It's ridiculous. And you're right, now is not the time for it. This is about land-thieving and extermination and government. It seems to me that God is being used by everyone for whatever aim they have. It seems like maybe that's how it has always been."

The ex-confederate fended his posture, motionless, crop at his side. There was a blink atop the stare, followed by resolution. He did not appear angry, but orderly.

"You're piss. A nothing. And seeing you in that uniform makes me sick. PATCH HIM UP AND GET HIM OUT OF HERE," the lieutenant shouted then. This last statement, an order to the medics, flowed with a venom usually hidden.

"Goodbye, sir," Emery said.

"Keep this godless cunt off my battlefield," Merrill ordered, walking out of the tent with a rigid back and heated eyes.

Before the truck arrived, Emery slept again, a small drift of bundles that made up his drugged mind. This was at first difficult, as he could not dislodge the pensiveness he felt that his superior might cause him much trouble over his earlier statements. Less statement than notion, but still stated. He did sleep for a time. This was the very entrance, the first opening of the door to those nightmares that would come in his future.

Waking from this in a start, out of breath and to the sting of receding morphine, his last official maneuver of war was to hold his breath as tightly as he could while moving onto a stretcher. Murphy, the Chaplin, was no longer present.

CUT TO:

EXT. MEDIC TENT IN LEYTE - MORNING

A medic truck pulls to a stop near the tent and we see the DRIVER step out, bringing a clipboard with him. We see a MEDICAL OFFICER approach him.

MEDICAL OFFICER:

You're late. Who ya here for? Murphy and Warner?

DRIVER:

Got orders for a Murphy, an Asher, and a guy named Wachs.

MEDICAL OFFICER:

Yeah, we got 'em. Second two are all right. Murphy is out cold; bled a lot while they were takin' his arm off. Might wake up, might not. It's like I said, you're late.

We see HOST ASHER enter the scene. He is wearing his black, tailored suit. He steps into frame from behind the truck, as if having strolled through the camp. This bit of real life is now a set, a scene. The DRIVER leaves frame, into the tent, leaving HOST ASHER in MEDIUM SHOT, CENTER, as he gives the closing monologue:

HOST ASHER:

The efforts of war. The game of conflict where young men stop each other's hearts and spill their lives across the ages. The war-zone of gun and mortar is the battlefield of sword and spear, and then the later theater, the one fought for all of a veteran's life, one of apprehension and grim memory. Perhaps more grim is that Private Asher will soon learn of the passing of his father. This is a time of death for the private, whether those near to him are lost to gunshot, grenade, faulty parachutes, or the time-honored tradition of heart attack.

The game of life and death sits in the perches of a man's soul, waiting, living with the nightmares of the soldier who can never extinguish his guilt or pride. Forever to haunt his dreams and psyche, the memory of those lost will follow his every step, keeping one foot always on _The Other Side_.

WIPE BLACK

END CREDITS

**Chapter Four**

The more astonishing thing was not that the professors had much to profess, or that the government had built a bridge over which Emery might cross and attend college (the plausibility of his enrollment had been thin before the war), but that the campus had not yet adopted timecards for their classrooms. No bells indicating class was to start, no strictness of schedule, no repercussions for missing class beyond an ever-lowering grade that did not feel to be all that important when returning from violence. So many seats were empty certain days, while so many intelligent professors baffled the very air with stale dilemmas and that certain pungency of near universal disdain for war. They were knowledgeable souls, with many fine arguments, and there were only a curmudgeonly few with callous faces, but either sort went unheard by numerous students who skipped lectures. Emery held a similar hatred for the war, its sensation of neglect permeating his hopes through those surly recollections of its worst attributes. These had burned into his ill dreams, snapshots scorched into his emulsion, but he had begun to understand why so many of the students on The Bill skipped the lectures: War was the topic that would not ease or settle, and it was referenced with incessancy on campus.

Most of the male students had been there, in Europe, or in the Pacific, firing at real men, and these professors had not, though there were one or two older instructors that had taken part in the First World War. Hearing disdain about what returning soldiers had been forced to do, as if blaming the draftees for their ordered actions, was as if having your marriage explained and dissected by lonely, single misers. There were professors in favor of the war, but these were so meshed with a love of history and skirmish that they seemed just as distanced from the war as those that despised what had happened. All agreed on one or two points, however: Germany had needed to be stopped, Japan had been foolish to attack the United States, and Russia was now becoming a large problem. At least in these views, everyone tended to agree.

The manner by which lecture was given seemed in long moments less the convoluted overlay of rhetoric than the shrill, warbling notes of a yodeler. Physics and history and the cursory instruction of photography being yodeled at you in a tiredly befuddling tenor that you couldn't be certain you were hearing at all. The oddity was that his professors held their views of war over his own, and instead felt to possess the truth of it more than those men who had returned home and promptly enrolled. There was worship involved, as well, from those people that had been too young or too old to be taken up by the war, but that had been all for it. There was a sense of ongoing reverence and homecoming for soldiers, but also a sense of caretaking. It was as if these world war believers quietly considered all of the returning men to be hayseeds and rubes, in need of being celebrated and hugged before being sat down and quietly informed about the war from which the soldiers had just returned.

Many students skipped their courses. They had enrolled for various reasons, but the largest was a compulsion due a difficult question: What else was there to do? Get a job and cease moving about? Accept that the prior, high-charged years were a temporary sort of world that would not be returning? They had survived a thing and wanted to see what they could do with the lives they had managed to keep. They were trained in a way that was no longer relevant. There had to be something for them; perhaps school or further training. Women were a monumental part of the new life they encountered. The empty seats in the lecture rooms were often, and not surprisingly, cold in the absence of bored-off veterans that were doll dizzy and youthfully raring. These were hollowed out classrooms only a hundred feet from courts and grounds that buzzed with couples and singles and the pulse of the interested and energetic.

Timecards would have helped.

Emery held his studies at arm's length. He did as was appropriated him, but ambled deeper into those few fantastic realms that caught his mind. Literature was the enticing Gilgamesh, gnomic verse, old Wordsworth, and, when academic eyes were not looking, his own private literary stock of Huxley, Wells, and a subscription to _Topnotch Science Tales_. Physical Education was the portion of his day that caught him most, after Literature, the latter for its intrinsic magnanimity of tale, which he felt in his blood, and the former in preparation of his major and occupation. Already he had served his work details at camp and in a halfway-house as resident counsel, and in the years to follow, there would be more internship, more field study, more labor, and from the crumbs of these biscuits, whatever nutrient of experience one might draw. He had planned on becoming a teacher and coach of the physical, but several other areas of interest had taken hold of him.

"You did mean it, didn't you?" she asked, looking at him.

"Of course I did. I'm no scamp, Beth. Even if I wanted to be, I don't quite have the age or height for it. You know I love you."

"Well, you could still be a scamp. Any man could. At whatever age. Good looks and war stories. Bluh."

"I'd make a good husband."

"Says you. And I'm tired of hearing it. How could we just get married like that? We couldn't, Em. We're not aligned."

"It's not astronomy. Just love. I rather like it."

"Of course you do. There's no risk on your part."

"You were less objectionable to it last week. It's like the closer we get to deciding, the less you want to decide."

"I know. We've talked it over too many times. Now I can't see it from the outside anymore. But I think I have the answer now, and I know how to tell you."

"Oh?"

"And you won't like it."

"I see."

"Because the answer is that I can't agree to marry you."

"Yeah, I got that."

"Just listen. I can't agree to it, Em. No matter how you might try to convince me. It's too complex. We can't do it. _And_ you should consider your mother, after all. It's only right to sacrifice some things for our families."

"That was how you prepared to tell me no? By bringing up my mother?"

"Well?"

Their ambling view of Antioch opened then upon the whole, busy smash of spring on campus. This university was a modern place and with a workman's appreciation of structure, but a sense of idolatry effused the place. It felt to be an institution holding itself high and marching as per the seasons. The whole of campus was a commanding officer. The structure and system reminded him of the ARMY yet was nothing like that force. Antioch had the force of fellowship and academia, yet was so unlike a place in which one might find true fellowship, as in a plane surging over a war zone, or an actual place of employment. He was not employed by Antioch to learn, but rather he employed the university to teach him, as was the new thought. He paid, or rather, the military paid. He had taken to study and the enhancing of his grayest matter well enough, but this broadening was not much interested with him. It seemed to like others more. Walking along the university's center courts gave one good cheer, but within the buildings and while sitting in lectures, one felt to be but a grain buried in the suffocating heat of a silo. College made you feel like a child, while entreating that you were assuredly an adult.

"I couldn't care less what my mother thinks of my wife," he replied, agitated at Beth's use of his mother as a device, "Her old religion is intolerant. I don't care about that. And I won't let the preoccupations of others, even my dear mother, blind me to anything that I actually find true and beautiful. Oh, that sounded nicer than I planned."

"I did sound nice."

"My brother said I should give my heart to whomever I please, and that mother will be fine."

"Isn't he still a bachelor?"

"Yes, well. At any rate, Susa the Jewish mother does not love you. That's true. But I do. And your Protestant grandparents don't love me, but _you_ do. It's not complex. It's incredibly simple."

"Emery, you're here on the G.I. Bill and-"

"What does that matter?" he interrupted, defensive.

"-and if you'll let me finish what I was saying... you also majored in English your first terms, then physical education for the next few. What'll it be this year? Do you even know? Will it be geography? Maybe baseball? My family would see you as a dumb lug who can't make up his mind. And worse, they'd treat you that way."

"Until I got to talking. You're right; I've been picky. I'm switching over to Literature, I think. And hell, even if I didn't switch, there's nothing wrong with physical education. It's a good job to work with kids."

"I know that."

"With your major, you of all people should understand that there's nothing wrong with teaching kids."

"Of course not. That's not what I meant. Don't snap your cap." Emery grunted at this. Telling someone not to be angry after you had made them angry never helped, but rather, accelerated that troublesome mood. He was put out, but contained his agitation as best he could. She was rejecting him, though her dodge was yet to truly smart because he had not yet chosen to accept it. He had anticipated her reaction and he was using his ploys to nudge it aside, just as she had ployed in bringing his mother into the argument. They were officious little lovers.

"Well, you're putting me down. That's _supposed_ to rile me. Besides, you know I'm no jock, and Phys Ed helped build up my knee again. I can actually run on the thing now. It's important to me not to have a gimp leg. I'm lucky I got to keep it."

This repair had taken time. In the perfecting of a wobbly walk, one needed to adopt swagger. The importance of a careless façade came into play, but was quick to become boring. The swagger tapered into the natural, dull limp over time and rehabilitation grew to be necessary. His second major had held a secondary agenda for him, in that he was working his knee into proper shape again. The years he suspected this should take were not to be needed, he had discovered. In his sophomore year alone, the knee began to feel as its brother did, and in the newest week, he was able to remove it from his hourly mind. The scars were a knotty mess, but not entirely unattractive, and so he was comfortable during those rare bouts of swimming with his newer acquaintances, and at the last retreat, Beth.

Her quick glances about, nervous perhaps at being seen in a manner that might be perceived as courting behavior, were adorable. That she was nervous did indicate she thought their relationship of worth, but also that she still wished, in some way, to keep it private, which inferred it was a thing to be hidden. Hiding things was something Emery did not enjoy. The world was better off when people said what they thought and were honest with themselves and others. Secrets, when not life-ruining, were a sort of deplorable thing to him. Emery sucked in his breath and strolled across the Antioch campus as a boyfriend of uncertain tenure, beside Beth in the manner he wished to be, and in the manner he hoped she, as well, favored. The air was chilled but his hands seemed warm. He would have preferred they hold one another's hands, but her resolve was chaste.

"Oh, I don't doubt you, Emery. And I didn't mean to put you down. But you see _they_ would. You'd be a bad meal in a restaurant to them, one they'd just pick and pick at. I know them, Emery, and you have to understand that my grandparents would not approve of you. Never. My father sent me here to school and provided this way for me. He chose to let his daughter attend college. That's unheard of in my family. And I can't just throw it in his face that I won't be like them, or that I don't take my schooling seriously. My mother and I fought very hard to convince him that my schooling wouldn't be a mistake, and marrying you, no matter how much I want to, would be exactly that to him. To both of them. Incontrovertibly. A mistake."

"Incontrovertibly," he muttered.

"Yes."

"I feel much better now, thank you."

"It's just that they won't approve of you. In any way."

"You said that already. Incontrovertibly."

"Em, they wouldn't even like your shoes. They'd especially loathe you if you didn't convert, and even then... well, my grandfather says the word 'convert' with a very special sort of venom."

"I've told you, that can't happen. My father's death made my mother a wreck. She can't even write out a check by herself anymore, or pay her bills correctly. Aunt Vera does all that for her. Since William declined her moving in with him in D.C., she's nearly abandoned. Boys that won't come home, husband gone... telling her I was converting and becoming a protestant would devastate her. I owe her the illusion that I am, still, to her measure, a good, Jewish boy."

"Well, I can't be a Jew, Emery. And you can't be a Protestant, so that's that."

"I'm so tired of this. It's all wet. Listen: My mother wouldn't approve of you anymore than your grandparents would care for me, dear. For whatever reasons they have. So we have to forget about that. All of it. I don't care. We're in love and we're both carrying the torch and we don't need their consent. This isn't Romeo and Juliet. Look around; the world is fine with us. Our stodgy parents are the ones who have the problem. They're the ones who make all these troubles and mistakes, not us. I jumped out of planes to try and repair some of the ills they've ground into this world. My knee was turned into chuck. They've made a muck of things for us, we all know it, and we can't let them make a muck of us."

"I won't lose my family, Emery. If you love me, you'll accept that. Just accept it."

"So you're declining my proposal?"

"Sadly," she said, a small nod following.

Study and learn and live and forget. Kill and win and be torn up and move on. Go up and come down. Jump to land. What madness. What universal calamity man had built for himself. He felt so good in it. He was as a dog ruling over his master's house. And he loved. He loved so fervently at times that the entire world eclipsed into his dizziness. The women were fond of the veterans and the veterans were fond of the women. They studied and learned and lived and they thought of one another and forgot one another to the day.

"...and last night?" he said, quieter.

"Oh, Emery. Let's not talk about it. Let's not."

"I'd like to."

"You've had too many girlfriends here. Oh, what's the nice way to say it...?"

"A ladies man. That's what they usually say when the man is well-liked."

"Right, a liar. A ladies man. I think you're still on active duty, Emery Asher. And no woman with any brains marries that."

"And no self-respecting ladies man would marry a bright woman, especially not daddy's pride and joy. In ensures he'll be caught being a louse. So it would seem that my asking to be your husband proves my willingness to be with you solely, and that I am not, in any way, on active duty, you."

"..."

"Do I have the point?"

"I hate how weirdly sensible your nonsense can sound."

"Well, ignore all that, then. Gobbledygook. Just remember this: We're in love, Saunders. That's a big deal. That certainly counts for much, if not all. You're all I think about, really."

"I know. You're star-crossed stupid. But none of this is any good. I do love you, Em. And I believe you love me, but how can I be certain I'm not your next girlfriend? I like being one, but not if I'm simply the next one."

"You're the only one. It's true. I'll write it on a blackboard a hundred times."

"Don't belittle it. I asked how I could be certain. Answer me that, mister."

"Well, I'm trying to marry you," Emery replied, "That's... that's damn certain."

"Oh, of course. Marriage. That's not a real answer, Emery, and I know it. It's an agenda for you _._ It's a mission. You're... you're pulling more maneuvers."

"That's silly. I've thought all of this out, sure, but that doesn't make it any less meaningful."

"I think you've thought out getting married more than you've thought out me, specifically. I'm above your pay grade, Emery Asher."

"That's wrong. And it's hurtful."

"Well, I'm sorry, but how else am I supposed to see this?"

"As an opportunity to be my one and only shiksa goddess."

"Oh, stop it. I'd have to be certain long before committing to marriage. And you don't make me certain about anything. You make me dizzy and dull."

She was correct about his history with women on campus. There had been many. To what purpose did a man receive his life from the den of his enemies if it was not to live well? Wasn't a good life the best sort of survival? The nightmares came so often lately. More than they had at first. The schooling diluted his mood and eagerness. The veterans compared their stories and wounds and girls to the point of vanity. What was there for Emery Asher? Pretty eyes lashed in ideas had followed him at times, especially that first year back. He could not help but notice, and want them. Yes, there had been girls, and many, but he had lied to no one, and he was less a ladies man than he was a recipient for opportunistic, fun-loving girls. They existed and he had been present. He was no hunter here; they usually made themselves quite available, shamefully and excellently, though that had all ended last year. No person seemed so real to him as Beth Masson Saunders.

She felt to him a woman he had thought up his very self, and that could not be manifest in actual life. In her presence, slight horns lifted from his brows and an impish smile crossed his thoughts. He had gone to much fun in swaying her fondness, and had given her so much thought of late that the other girls he saw walking campus now seemed as if improbable fictions. Beth Beth Eliza-beth.

"Do you want me to stand on my motorcycle and do circles beneath your dorm window? That brainchild got your attention quite well. Hey, I could try a handstand and yell out your name so everyone knows who, this time."

"Heavens, no. That was humiliating. It bothers me when you grandstand like that. You can be some sort of fat-head sometimes."

That was untrue; she was supposed to act bothered, was all. The Sun had set and the air had taken up its chill from the outlay of campus. Emery returned to the particular detail most present in his day's mind.

"Then what about last night? You seemed certain enough, then."

"I told you, I'm not going to talk about that," she said, annoyed.

"Wonderful things deserve to be talked about."

"No, they should be treasured quietly, or else forgotten."

"How philosophical and crone-like of you."

"You're being a pill, Emery."

"You're a hag, Beth."

"Curly jewboy."

"Bitch wasp."

These were insults that passed one sort of talk into another. Unfriendly words said between loves in studious mockery. Irony. Little words in the twilight. They meant only what was intended in saying them, which was nothing but the frustration of impasse. Beth was a crude teaser, as was Emery. They got along quite well because of this humor. He felt forceful now that the Sun had fallen, a bit of darkness spurring him.

"I wish you were certain about me," he said, a little pained. This was legitimate feeling, and despite his coltish behavior and single-mindedness, he did have a great amount of care for her. She sighed and gave in.

"Fine. Emery, last night was... well, that was a present for you. I was giddy, is all."

"Yes. Excellently giddy."

"And we didn't have the whole sin, so I think it could be fixed with a few prayers."

"Wouldn't it be nice if that were true?"

"Well, it _is_ true."

"What's true is that I'm going to marry you and your family will just have to tolerate me. In my mind, it has already happened. It's you and me, Beth. Now, I know they raised you, but if your grandparents won't tolerate me, well, then I won't tolerate them, and they can just have their lonely, great-grandchild-less Christmas by themselves each year."

"Great-grandchild?!"

"At some point. You did say you wanted two children some day."

"Eventually, you dolt, but with my _husband_."

"Yeah, that's me."

"And you and I _can't marry_ , Emery. Look at you going on in the future like that. It's silly and it sort of hurts. You don't seem to understand reality; you'd wish my grandparents to be as lonely as you say your mother is? That's cruel."

So many things were cruel. Finding a place in which to nestle his life among others, to simply be among his fellow men... that was, at times, cruel. Foregoing rare joys in the securing of a grander, longstanding pleasure, like a marriage or tolerable career... cruel. Dying parents. A pulverized kneecap. Bullets. Orders. Night. Frost. A lack or abundance of vision. Cruelty was on every tongue to have ever spit a bigoted word into every cruel ear that made one hear it. He had found enough cruelty in his life. He needed no more, and for this had entered into that lifelong skirmish of optimism and apology.

"I- You're right. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"Let's just have our walk and talk about something different."

"All right, Ms. Saunders. I concede."

"Good."

"..."

"..."

Talk wanted itself. They both felt it.

"Say, how did your test go?" he asked, then.

"Chemistry or English?"

"Oh, did you—

"Well, either way, they both went well, I think."

"Ah. That's good news."

Silence. His subjects adjusted to match her own, then fell out of place again. Non-syncopation of their walk occurred. He was tired and thought briefly of kissing her. Right there on the walkway.

"Are you sleeping any better?" she finally asked.

"No," he admitted, "Just look at my eyes. Once I'm out, I'm mostly fine. It's getting there that's rough."

"I did notice them. I'm sorry to hear it."

"Sure."

"..."

"..."

"Unitarianism, Beth."

"What?"

There was a time for everything. To finish college. To launch a career. Time enough to jump from a plane and wait for the ground. He had rummaged through her arguments of late, and struck upon a unique salve by which they might mend their thoughts on the matter of a life together. It was the long-shot, but all he really had left in argument. Academia, it seemed, had birthed a church. This was a last resort for Emery, a final attempt. It as not a ploy, or a strategy, but a viable possibility for removing certain problems in their being together, marriage or not. He had kept on to the idea in the event she might grow certain not to marry him. Emery cleared his throat and tried to explain himself, to do justice to the ramshackle occupation on which he would now fall back.

"Keep an open mind for a second. See, an instructor was telling us about how it worked. And I looked at a few pamphlets."

"What on Earth for?"

"Safe passage."

"I don't understand."

"Listen, I've given this a lot of thought. I'm at a brick wall, and this is something I hope you'll take a good look at before tossing more bricks at my feet."

"The Unitarians aren't my sort of people, Emery."

"Who cares? That system could be good for us. The whole thing is practically designed to help people like you and I survive our religions. You could be you and I could be me, and everyone else would simply frown a bit, that's all."

"Are you pulling a gag?"

"No. If we needed to, we could join into Unitarianism. You can have your beliefs, and our stony guardians can have theirs. We could marry. It's not even a conversion, technically."

"Tell me we're not back to this. I'm tired of this."

"Yes, we're back to this."

"Marriage. Beliefs. I don't think you understand how serious a thing getting married is. You don't do that just because you love someone. And what right do you have to talk about beliefs, anyway? What beliefs would you possibly get in being Unitarian? I don't think you have any beliefs."

"I take marriage in the traditional view. A sacred thing if you decide to let it be that. I'm more than serious about being your husband, and I've given it far more thought than you seem to think I have. And as for beliefs... well, you know me and those. I'm on even ground with everyone."

"Honestly, I may not know all there is to know about the Jews, Emery, but I do know that belief in God is a big deal to them. And everyone else, for that matter, including Unitarians. I don't know what you're up to with that."

"Well, I suppose I'm the wicked sort. You know, an impostor. Grifter, too. Deceitful. Plausibly sinister."

"Something or other."

"Please marry me."

"Emery, no."

"Then I shall have to impregnate you and give the marriage a kick in the pants to stir things along."

"Emery Asher!"

"Well, if I'm going to be deceitful, I don't see the service of not going the full mile. No one likes a slacker, Beth. I imagine one would have to work quite hard at deceit to get very good at it, and I'm the sort who likes to be the best at things."

"Stop talking like that. It's annoying and... and crazy. And dopey, too."

"I aim to be the best at those things, as well."

"Well, you're off to a brilliant start. You're an irritating, mad goof."

"Please marry me, Beth."

He noticed their walk had aligned again. Timing. Perhaps she would push him from her in the weeks to come, or begin distancing herself that very night. This was a plausible end to their story. There was, however, the matter of love, an emotional sea from which both had taken a strong drink. This above all else kept her from discovering what a wretch he felt to be. How worthless and lost he felt. So little seemed to matter, but certain points kept him navigating. As their feet moved over the grass, he couldn't but wonder if she knew what little time he had spent with those previous women, what little of him had truly been alive enough to even attempt feeling anything in the past two years, and how much he now did, how often he thought of her.

The clocks ticked on at Antioch and the two made their way across the final stretch of path to her dormitory. How many hours had he spent walking her home in wondrous talk in the past months? Enough to fill a complete day, maybe more. How many moments had been spent at her dormitory's main door wondering if there was to be another kiss this time? Infinite. There was no proof of this, however. How could she know? There were no declarations of his feeling but for those in mere words, and she did not trust those. How could he prove his mind's willingness to continually dote on her?

Timecards would have helped
**Chapter Five**

Nicks in the surface of the oak desk were visible despite over-waxing and a dark stain, scratches and small digs that contrasted with the rough edge of the wood and its hasty construction. This was a cheap desk, and through the lacquer and wax one could see that the oak was not so old as it at first seemed, but had merely been mishandled and slapped together with too much speed. This was good wood put together poorly by an uncaring shop in years past. Mr. Gill was tapping his cigarette toward a green, glass ashtray. This receptacle had a jagged, chipped corner, damage likely present after being dropped. Mr. Gill did not reach a close enough proximity with his cigarette, however, causing the haphazard ash to dash against the waxy coating of the desk in a quality much like a dot of paint being spattered. The ashen debris joined into the sheen of the surface, one that looked to be wiped off with a bare palm on occasion, to make room for soon-stained papers and the various office paraphernalia of a radio station manager. In this instance, the station manager was also the program director. In his hand, the station manager held one of three identical items, the other two resting on the desk near the ashtray. These items represented the entirety of his lunch.

"Hot dog?" the manager asked, his mouth full of slurry and smoke.

"Thank you. I've already eaten," Emery replied.

"So eat again."

"Oh, I'm fine. You know, the history of that product is an interesting one. German immigrants, fancy restaurants, then state fairs and the such. Wrote a paper on it in high school. I've always preferred 'frankfurter', to be honest. Like the word more. Not so good when it changed to 'hot dog', which is based on the exclamation. It's somewhat as if we named them 'gosh darns' or something of that nature."

"Jesus. Who cares?" the station manager asked, looking at Emery to discern if the writer was being serious or not.

"Well, no one. I was just saying."

"And anyway, with those kraut's having done what they did? They don't get to name nothin'. It's only right."

"I fought some of those," Emery said.

"Good, now they can keep their frankfurters and we can have our hot dogs."

Mr. Gill sat behind the desk in a necessarily lax position due to his weight and the unscrupulous position of his desk near the small window. That this window offered a second floor view of Cincinnati's downtown was only a small presence, being only four missing bricks that had been replaced with badly sealed glass. When one took into view the cluttered, messy office, it was with artificial light. The view was bare anyway. A few colors behind the glass were all that was represented of the outside world. The desk faced this window, far enough back that one might, if need for the outside became overwhelming, glance at specks of it with a tilt of the head. The feeling was dungeon-like. The sort of furnishing and placement of the room gave enough space for a chair by normal means, though not quite enough room for the space a fat man needed between such a chair and his desk. Mr. Gill was one such man. With cigarettes. A fat man in the ever-curling wit of recently drawn, lung-filtered smoke. Seeing this waft of burning tobacco caused Emery to retrieve his pack and light one, himself. Both of the men were smoking, as was expected. This was a job interview, an introduction to the career ahead. Emery hoped employment might result from this uncomfortable encounter; he was in dread need of a job.

Beth was at home and their rent was nearing the date at which payment could not be supported by their current reservoir of money, which more a puddle than an expanse. They were low to the coin. His father would have called it 'flat broke'. Beth called it 'a start'. There were many ways to say most anything.

"What about German Chocolate Cake?" Emery said then, nervous and uncertain of what he should talk about, "Will we say 'American Chocolate Cake' now?" Many things had changed name due to the war, and though the war had ended, with the Russians sitting in the cat-bird seat in Germany and with two Japanese cities having been cindered, the changes continued. Such was the American view of devastated enemies; there were many ways to narrow the eyes. Removing another nation from current commerce and diction was a smaller spoil of war, but one of those few in which the average citizen, even a child, could take part. Mr. Gill's eyes grew at this and he gave a smile of surprise.

"American Chocolate Cake. Huh, it's funny you bring that up. Couple days ago, I read that one. In my wife's Clarion rag. We call it Devil's Food Cake now."

"Ah, devils! I see the allusion, but changing the names of things seems... unnecessary and a little fatuitous," Emery said.

"What's it to you, anyway? You're nobody."

"Sure, I'm only saying."

"You keep saying that. Listen here, man of words, I'm going to show you something about the wonders of radio. Play along, would you? I want you to lay out a definition for me: Define 'fatuitous'."

"Well, it mostly means 'absurd'."

"Got it. Absurd. Which in turn would mean what? 'Silly', right?"

"Well, they're synonymous for the most part."

"For the most part! I like that. That's the part we're concerned with, right? The part that's the most."

"I think I follow."

"And if you take fifty guys and ask 'em what 'fatuitous' means, how many do you think will know it?"

"Most?" Emery tried.

"No. Hardly a dozen. How many would know what 'absurd' means?"

"All of them."

"Maybe, maybe not. It's not assured. Now how many would know what 'silly' means?"

"Again, all of them."

"Right. Definitely all of them, this time. Because 'silly' is the most common way to say it, the way you hear it the most. Now, those fifty guys? They're probably listeners."

"I understand."

"You want to be in radio, you say 'hot dog' and 'silly', not the other words, Antioch. We play for folks, not fellows? If you want to be a jackass on the air, you do it with funny voices, not fatuitous words. You gettin' how this works?"

"I am. It's quite clear, Mr. Gill. And I can do that, of course."

"Glad to hear it, Mr. Asher. Say, listen to that. Mister to mister. You and I and what do you know, we're all business in here. That'd be swell if I actually liked doing these interviews," the man said, pausing for a moment to bite and chew. Mr. Gill's managerial power served as a hard, prophylactic shell around what was probably a crass and unapologetic sleazebag. A dray that thought himself a racer.

"I suppose I could take one of those hot dogs from you, after all. Then we'd be less in an interview and more in a lunch?" Emery offered.

"That's a queer thought. Say, that makes me wonder. What sort of name is Asher? Sheeny name, right?"

Beth with the ever-lit eyes. The dark hair and Protestant grandparents. Beth pregnant and awaiting the third trimester with certain zeal, a mood Emery would confess he admired greatly. In the realm of mothers, or as Emery knew them by his own and those he had met, there was a certain staunch will that gave its effort over to women. A father could not do what a mother did. It was not in him. A mother seemed somehow better connected to that hub of what it meant to be alive, whether you knew your own or not. There was a reason so much of mythology involved rebirth and various forms of the world and its seas as a womb. The sense of motherhood and creation was everywhere. It was a bit of shame that when he had met Beth in college and fallen in love, they had to turn from the ways of their guardians. His Jewish family and her Protestant family did not approve of their marriage, and had forbid it in the way one forbids an insect at the brow: With quick waves, furrows, and the occasional bit of profanity. They were not a couple to tolerate or allow. Emery and Beth had changed at Antioch, however. The couple had chosen a newer route, Unitarianism, closely tied to the school, and this specific course had given them the marriage they so wanted, though alienated them each from their lineage.

"A sheeny name," Emery repeated. Mr. Gill shrugged.

Emery had lately taken to the works of Jung. He was attempting to discover himself, or at the least understand the path of his thoughts, his place in the modern consciousness. Unitarianism had aided in this, but caused him to question more, as faith was wont to do. That a man might change his religion so liberally had him wondering what other things might also be altered so simply, should he desire change. Occupations might swivel more with one's dreams in this way, or perhaps marriage reach its full measure with minds thus opened to their potential. Much could change for a man if his mind were allowed to think it, and not simply wish or pray for it. Was not perception one of the firmest foundations of psychology and philosophy, of literature and politics? Jung, Sartre, and Goebbels had shown as much.

As a newly married man, Emery's latest undertaking was that of discovering his wife. No wish or hope would suffice this. He needed to be with her more. To do more than adore her, or provide for her, or change his faith for her, but to accompany her as she accompanied him. Proximity was perhaps the most important facet of being a social creature. Proximity made lovers and liars, friends and thieves.

"Yeah. That the story?" Mr. Gill reiterated, fidgeting the cigarette in his fingers.

"It might be a name like that. What about Gill, sir? It seems to me that might be a mick name." The program director's eyes sharpened as he exhaled smoke. A vein stood out on his neck.

"I'll unscrew your goddamn head, kid. That how you want this to go? Because you look frail."

Having lived through the war and completed his schooling, he was left with a strange void into which his days had begun to spiral. There was little within this but the passage of time, and Emery was the sort for whom dreams weighed much, and followed long after their need. A path. A route. Carrying those bits of his mother and father, always present in him, toward a full, new fruition. A man with a mind with a timbre. That's what he considered his meaning. He felt an incessant draw toward an unknown thing, a job for the creative mind, a way to take one's feats and manifest them into the world in a manner unique and personally contrived. He might have been a fat-head. His slow metamorphosis from soldier to student to bum might have been nearly complete. He needed more than work; being a lark within a man and given grain only fed the lark portion of him. His urge was toward being the self-made sort, a writer making a name, yes, though it was tawdry to base another man's worth on only this.

"Sir, to be honest," Emery said, "my last name is the name of someone who graduated from Antioch, fought the Germans and Japanese, is happily married, and can work hard."

"Antioch? What degree?" the Mr. Gill asked.

"Literature."

"Eh, that won't help you much here. Didn't answer my question, either. You're a Jew, right?"

"Well, are you a Nazi, Mr. Gill? I don't see an insignia." Mr. Gill frowned at this and exhaled hard, smoke in a horizontal cyclone that dissipated quickly. He was a real Model A.

"I'll forgive that because you're uppity. Listen kid, I'm all right. Just like to know where a person comes from."

"Binghamton, New York, America. My parents were Jewish; my wife and I are Unitarian. I served in the war until a grenade pulverized my knee. I'm a college graduate and I have a child on the way. That's where I come from. Is that an acceptable background to work in your radio station, Mr. Gill?"

"Oh, cool off. You wouldn't still be here if I didn't like you some. You vets need to learn how to take a rib. I'm getting the idea you've never had a regular job before."

"I've had a few. And not too many." Emery thought briefly of the work he supported his wife with when they were first married: Testing experimental Air Force parachutes for $50 a jump, and the grand he had made testing a jet ejection seat that had killed three others. Those reckless and scurrying days were over. He had a family on the way.

"Unitarians, huh? That's very Antioch, all right. Which force were you in?"

"ARMY. 11th Airborne. I was a paratrooper."

"Say, that's something."

"Sure it was."

Dropping in a plummet with a rifle. Into someone's shouts, possibly your own. Because you were told to do so. No amount of Boy Scout training could have settled him into a disposition that could have handled such a thing. Those years of Scout Leaders talking about war were as if a cruel joke. Even the military had barely readied him for such an energetic spitting in death's face. Rope tying badge. Bronze Star. Foraging badge. Philippine Liberation Medal. Ribbon for generosity. The great badge of condolence for having his knee obliterated by angry, tacit, enemy vitriol. Puffed parachutes hanging men into a sea of spittle and flame, again and again. Scouts, soldiers... What responsible young men they made. Killers for the insignias they gained, the flags they held aloft, and the cleavage of earth by doctrine kept in the hands of its owners. It was short-lived. He got on the wrong C.O.'s nerves and ended up in the 511th demolition platoon for a time. The nickname for where they put him was the Death Squad. His guilt over forgetting to load his magazines, over his trouble keeping his mind on the ground, and getting lost several times while wandering, had abated. They were foolish troubles, and he had been young. That he did not get a bullet through the brain was some sort of fortune.

While his shame over certain things had slowly left him, some things would not. The images of from Leyte and Manila were acid-etched into his memory and the nightmares were near him, most weeks, hovering above his bed and waiting for him to close his eyes in a drift. His bitterness was a constant ally and enemy, and navigating it had taken years to learn. He had not been cut out for war, but had found out too late. He knew that luck and the watchful eye of others were large contributors to the current state of his heart, which was still, thankfully, beating. At times, he wondered if he had caused more trouble than he had solved, then he thought of the Japanese dead, and all the things they would have done to his brothers had he not done those things first to the Japanese. He had helped the effort, most of the time.

"Jumpin' outta planes. Crazy stuff. Any medals?" the station manager asked. The smoke was beginning to cloud the room, making it difficult to breathe.

"Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and a Philippine Liberation Medal."

"What won the heart for ya?"

"The knee. Shrapnel"

"A real shame. That's a tender spot."

An accent on the word 'tender' made the statement somewhat of a taunt. Emery dragged from his cigarette and held the smoke a moment. He felt leeway in the interview, which contained a certain terseness that overshadowed acting. Mr. Gill, through his obtuse mannerisms and feign at grumpiness, was still applicably the sort of man to which one could speak one's mind. This was enjoyable but possibly out of place. Emery was pleased by the likelihood that this program director and station manager was minutely fond of him. Teasing a person did this, promoting interest. Teasing also opened a slight chute into which directness could flow, as if anything said was only of mild seriousness and could be taken back if needed. Banter. Chumminess that acted at the opposite. This was illusion, something for which Emery felt comfortable, and he used the irksome prod of Mr. Gill's knee taunt to take advantage.

"Mister, if you're done punching the bag, I'd like to get to business. Can I work for you or not?"

"How about double-shifting?"

"All right."

"You agreed. That's good. But remember _you_ did that. You, not me."

"I can work double-shifts if I have to."

"You _do_ have to, once I decide whether I'm keeping you or not. And I'll make that decision quick, too, so you'd better know your onions by the end of the first day. I'm not easy on that, so do a good job; I can clutch a guy on his second day without thinkin' twice."

Beth at home, in the small house propped up at the end of Glendora, was Beth in spades. So pleased and everywhere all at once. Her transition from Antioch had been difficult, as moving into the city was not an act in which she could remain idle, and the packing and details of each portion of the move had met her eyes in many modes. An ordinarily timid presence in a car, she had become as a ramp during the long drive to Cincinnati, a ramp from which he launched with each pass of an intersection, her every glance at a map and statement of upcoming direction. She had been the navigator. Once the new house had been reached and finalized with the aid of money from his brother, William, she returned to her usual demeanor and quickly fell into her hobbies again. Beth was much invested in tradition, and wanted children early. Right after they married. That she had fallen pregnant in conjunction with the move, with the new life, comforted her, and no amount of another's joy could match her own at the news of her approaching motherhood. With this and the relocation completed, she finally felt at home. Emery did not.

There was little calm in him and a slight panic had begun to infiltrate his ego's theater. That his love for her and the notion of being a father beside her were honest and distinct feelings, they were in no way indicative of his time for her or the looming child. This would be overrun by radio, which had become obvious even as Emery researched the field he was entering. It was unlikely she knew just how much he would have to be away. This troubled him and he did not relish the near future. A double-shifter was anymore a time-honored, American way, despite its unprovoked audacity, and a man without work was considered a louse. The war had brought as much to bear on the country. Times had picked up. So, it was inferred, were men to pick up; they were to dust off their fears and focus on the New America. A Buick in the garage and a wife to suit the heart. These were tertiary devices to Emery. Coveted by his fellows, but to him merely available. To be competent was only a beginning. He wanted to be thought well of, as far as thought could travel and in as many directions as it could fester. It began with Beth. Beth who thought so well of him.

"Now listen," the manager continued, "I know Antioch. I know the types that come out of there. And I don't want any complaining over hard work, you understand? We work here. No cryin' or you'll get the bum's rush before you can wipe the first tear."

"You think I'd start crying over this place?"

"You sorts tend to cry."

Another taunt. The fat face full of name-changes and gelatinous meat, huffing cheap brand cigarettes and spewing smoke over the stench of cold, machine-burgled pork from his gut. With each word. Every belch or idea. A slap against that face would be wondrous, to see the imprint of a strong hand put attitudes in their proper arrangement. Of course, Emery's hand was a begging sort, being on the plaintiff side of an interview. Slaps were out. At least with the hands.

"It's 'your sort tends to cry'. I should also explain that you do not know me. You're beating your gums."

"Yeah well, I can do that. And don't correct me. Only assholes do that."

"Mr. Gill, let me ask you this: When do I start?"

"Well, that's an assumption-and-a-half. You're chesty, I'll say that."

"I'd like to start working. I'm hoping that comes through you."

"Well, I want to hire somebody and you want to be hired, so I figure-"

"When can I start?"

"-Don't you interrupt me. Ever. And I'm supposed to ask _you_ that, kid."

"All right."

The silence of waiting and estimation. Mr. Gill's temper wanting to surface but staying low enough to conserve in his large cheeks a sunless pallor, and keep in his face that quetched, joggling composition it had formed over the years. Mr. Gill reached over, tonguing his lip a moment as he snuffed out his cigarette in the shoddy ashtray. It met many extinguished others in the glass bowl, joining into a bouquet of soot and stinking fibers.

"Fine, so when can you start?" he asked.

"Tomorrow. Or anytime between soon and right away."

"Look, don't smart me; you've already done it too much. And I changed my mind. I don't like uppity, after all. Don't be arrogant."

"Yes, sir."

"So you'll start right away, which does happen to be tomorrow. Five a.m."

"Understood."

"Don't drink tonight. And owls can't handle this job, so go to bed early. Bring your lunch. You'll work a double-shift."

"All right, then. You can count on me, Mr. Gill." Though Emery had said this with a bit of flippancy, it was ostensibly true.

"Yeah, I bet."

"I'll see you in the morning."

"No, you'll see me right now, down in the Red Room," Mr. Gill said, pushing away from his desk and expending much effort in getting to his feet in the cramped conditions of his office, "I want to get you introduced to Aaron, down there. He'll be watching over you so I don't have to."

After passing the control room and subsequent office, down the short and noticeably damp hall through the recording rooms, the two entered a downward stairwell that reeked of chemicals. Mr. Gill waved his fleshy wrist.

"Acetate. We have to record some. Stinks, so the boys try to cover it up with aftershave. I'd say this week it's Mennen."

At the bottom of the stairs they passed two rooms with various broadcasting equipment and one with a lathe. At the end of this sub-level hallway in the furthest reach of the barely-heated basement was the writer room, apparently referred to as the 'Red Room'. Emery and Mr. Gill entered and met the sole occupant of this narrow, cinder-walled place. He was a tall, thin man dutifully hunched over a small desk, pens scattered about and a red one, the one for revision, in his right hand. Perhaps the color of this pen was what lent the informal name to the room. Emery noticed a second, even smaller desk in the corner of this isolated, concrete space. The diminished desk reminded him of junior high. He wondered if he might find anything carved into it. Frank Gill led Emery to the man, who did not immediately acknowledge them. Emery could see the pages the writer was looking over. The thin man drew a sudden scratch through the words "a time of", then scribbled a quick series of marks above another circled phrase. After this, he looked up at the two men.

"Okay, sorry. This the new guy?"

"Yeah, this is him. Antioch, say hello to my writer, Maury Aaron."

"Hello Maury."

"Sure, hi. You're a writer, huh?"

Frank Gill made his way around the desk and glanced over Maury's current work, talking as he scanned. This continuance on Mr. Gill's part postponed Emery's ability to return Maury's comment.

"He's a lit guy, so keep him off the Shakespeare, huh?"

"Will do, boss," Maury said.

"He's the fiver; gonna double-up, most days," Frank said.

"There any other way?"

"Don't I know it. You get _Hospital Field_ finished?"

"Through Thursday. I'll have all the ninth week written out by morning. Draft."

"Swell. Rogers and Castle want to pull their endorsements on the six-to-seven spots if _Hospital Field_ doesn't get new material. They think re-running a show sounds bad, doesn't feel real enough; a less popular place to stick an ad."

"Isn't it?" Maury asked.

"No. Hey, this should be cute," Mr. Gill said, pointing to a line on the manuscript. Maury nodded.

"Thanks. It's for the _Rangers_ serial, when Eddie first meets-"

"No, I mean the word. Nix 'whimsical'. Use 'cute'."

"Oh, sure thing."

"You see this, Antioch?" Mr. Gill asked, looking at the new hire, "No Shakespeare. This is radio."

"I understand," Emery said, hiding his annoyance at Mr. Gill's presumptuousness, as well as the obnoxiousness of the nickname 'Antioch'.

"And hey, don't screw up. That's a big one around here. And if you do, for the love of God, don't let the screw up hit the air."

"I won't," Emery assured.

"Good, I'll keep that in mind for when you do. They always do. I'm back upstairs to finish my appointment with lunch, Maury. Thought I'd bring him down, let you two chat a bit. He starts with you tomorrow."

"Got it, boss. I'll whip him around some," Maury said.

"Good, 'cause he's smart. We'll have to fix that. Oh, and by the way, kid," Mr. Gill said, changing his focus and waving a limp arm briefly around the Red Room, "Welcome to WKCR. And Cincinnati, for that matter."

The down-hanging roundness of Frank Gill exited the Red Room, which was neither red nor roomy. Maury scratched out a word and added another smaller one on the page at hand. After a moment of quick-eyeing the line, he looked up at Emery. To Emery, this writer seemed congenial of brow and did not show the weathering signs of ill temper. He would probably turn out to be a friendly sort, good-natured, though the brunt of his occupation must certainly have brought him to irritation at times.

"New guy. What's your name?" Maury asked.

"Asher. Emery Asher. And it's keen to meet you, too. I meant to say that earlier."

"Right, right, sucks the air from a room. You know, like a Hoover. I write villains based on him all the time. Hasn't caught on that all my arrogant characters tend to be fat."

"He's certainly in charge."

"One way to put it. Easy to work for, so long as you can gas it."

The habit his new employer, only minutes into the arrangement, had taken up, of calling Emery 'Antioch', was nettlesome and a sporadic bother that would hopefully cease in the days to come. Nettlesome meant cranky, of course. Mr. Gill was cranky. And disturbingly corpulent. Or rather, stout. Meaning fat. This was writing, for radio, and he was now employed, which would be of strong merit to his life with Beth, fledgling as he was in both his career and marriage. He would take her out to dinner tonight, in celebration, and perhaps they might work on a name for the new Asher on its way to the world. They might have a nice evening, and then go early to bed, that he might begin his role in radio with a discerning mind from reliable sleep.

"I don't think I prefer him calling me 'Antioch'. It's petty and small," Emery said.

"Well, stick around; it'll pass. He only this year stopped referring to me as 'The Rabbi'."

"Did you study to be that?"

"No, I'm just Jewish."

"He doesn't seem fond of that, I've noticed."

"Everybody's gotta dislike somebody."

"Yeah? What about you? Who do you dislike?"

"You kiddin' me? New guys." Emery chuckled at this.

"That's good. Say, can a guy smoke down here?"

"Well sure, there's a vent. And it's still America up there, isn't it?"

Maury was all right. From courses and study, Emery had deduced there were no greater indicators of talentlessness than vanity or a lack of humor. There were stoics, of course, and their choice talent was relevant to their interests, which could be vast, but in the public, in the world's world, in radio, he suspected there had to be a smirk behind every poke or that poke became a stab.

"What sorts of jobs you have before this? Your experience, I mean," Maury asked.

"College and military. A few side jobs. Nothing with entertainment except for a year doing some voice-work for the campus radio."

"So you're mostly new to getting paid for this. Fresh out, huh?"

"Yes, I'm new."

"Did uh, did you fight much?"

"Some."

"No kidding? Which were you in?"

"I was in the Pacific. A few places. Okinawa, Borneo, Leyte, Manila— "

"I meant which branch. You look like a handsome guy; sailor, right? How about it? You travel the seas with a cap and the bell-bottom swagger? Wait to make land and see all the girls?" Emery snorted at this idea.

"Friend, I was a paratrooper. I'd start off just about as far from land and water as a fellow can get."

**Chapter Six**

Public-service announcements existed in an exacting length of this-will-happen-at-this-time. The advertisements were fifteen seconds. Thirty. Forty-five. One minute. At times, an entire half-hour could be given to an advertisement, by sinking a few songs to the bottom and giving it a name like _The Coca Cola Singers of America Tribute Special_. Emery wrote a variety of scripts. There was the occasional documentary drama, possibly thirty minutes, if he was lucky. Most of his assignments were much shorter.

The dreamless and grueling days had swollen over his breathing passage, days that now contorted his brain into easily accessible slots. The smallest words plausible in the shortest time possible. A wink to the ad-man. Open up the window to let him in. This served a purpose of money and swift reporting, and while the aspect of writing in the conveyor-belt method was a discipline-maker, and a certain route to technique, the process was also frustrating and creatively indigent. It paid what was owed, however.

The Midwest had a lot of ears and they perked at all hours for news and song, for a play at plays, an identifiable voice, and to revel in the characterization the radio gave them. Why the citizens of this great region never seemed offended at being treated like brand-donkeys with simple minds confused Emery. He found the programming of WKCR to be a little patronizing. Romanticizing the salt-of-the-Earth was fine, but calling an entire audience "simple folk" came off rude. The people tuning in did not seem annoyed, however, and tended to devour this sort of programming. Emery did not understand why the midwest seemed to enjoy the term 'simple', but he was paid to propel it, so he wrote what was expected, always trying to anchor a few of his own conceits into the scripts he turned out.

Emery worked double-shifts of rewrites often, adding to the strategic dilution of material for brevity and the radio race. This system of writing was useful for productivity but lapsed in repeat programming. All of it was tailored to a strange ensconcing of brands and their forced place in the difficult-to-gauge post-war moral. Not even a good moral, but a marketer's moral. The green leaves in his skull had begun to crisp and dry, and the exhaustion from round-the-clock writing at the small desk often came home with him, behind the eyes, having contaminated his voice with light groans as he set himself in chairs or bed.

Risks were made, though only when he felt safe to push a particular boundary. In an effort to bring himself to his work, to write it, and not simply be a transcriptionist of the overly hashed, he had to attempt uncommon things. Emery began learning what he could get away with, at times to reprimand, but usually, to little notice. These risks were a good gamble, and worth attempting, but they were still unaccountable. In what meager off-time he managed to keep, he penned stories, and had written several plays for television, which was becoming somewhat of a rage in American homes. These stories saw not much light, however, and the men behind the television screen, off camera and out of sight, were unsure of what the public wanted on a home screen. The medium was too young to have a known purpose, so the producers kept to sports, televised plays, and odd programs that seemed to be little more than radio with pictures.

These new networks, screen networks, unlike film companies, were too much absorbed with not being Hollywood to see that they were going to reach millions, some not even in the country. Emery was fascinated with the medium, and had many ideas about how he might use it to benefit particular stories, but getting into television was proving a maze of brick walls and always-changing wants. Television was a happening place at the bottom of the sea, and you could hear much about the people who hosted the party, but it was still submerged and secluded, and getting an invitation was proving out of Emery's reach.

When too long a time had passed without working on some new story or free-lance script, whether these were to be purchased or not, Emery's urge to create and tell a thing began to infest his work at the station. He began doctoring scripts for sound, lengthening details for literate appeal. The scripts were of more interest in this mode, and he had hoped to push Mr. Gill to the same conclusion, at the least in small runs. Emery's conceit wanted him to stun an audience with good material and perhaps have his duties risen to those of a writer who mattered more than what he could do with red scratches and the barbed-wire rules that surrounded radio scripts.

The piece was still a sample, incomplete, but well on the mystical track to its totality as an hour's radio. The call had been for fifty-two minutes of story paced to allow four two-minute commercial slots that could be offered to the sponsors. The project had been given to him as a large break, though Mr. Gill had also offered it as a means to quiet Emery for a short while, giving the dog a bone so that it might slink off and chew for awhile, leaving the master be. Regardless of Mr. Gill's intent, these assignments did not come along often, and Emery had sought to use the project to expose himself as possessing a certain talent that might prove unique. That this was, in most matters concerning broadcast radio, wondrously unwanted, had not yet occurred to him but for those brief flits of doubt he was careful to slough off, even when weary. He was lucky that Maury had not wanted the assignment. As the senior writer, Maury had his pick of things.

A thirty-piece orchestra. Huzzah! That was twenty-seven professional players above and beyond what was expected. He had written a work of great description, but enlisted it for radio, and so the unique flavors of dialogue and theme had played into the concession of the form in a novel way. The piece was likeable. It called for a narrator and served its subject in a light of both notoriety and historical wonder. He had been asked to write a puffer, an hour outlining a particular small town of the target audience. Midwestern towns had been treated to this sort of loyalty-pandering in programming for some time, in the mode of public relations and listener-hugging, and it was now the time for Green Hills, Ohio, to have its people and charters and days chronicled and broadcast for them to hear.

That these towns existed was not enough for a show. Most had a single, supportive industry, some a major one, or even two, and each had the general antiquities of growth and founding dates, but anything beyond this, written and dramatized and set on the airwaves, was not the work of documentation, but tribute, a game not of representation, but subtle fabrication. Listeners were more loyal when you spoke to them, and most loyal when you spoke _about_ them. For this, an on-air personality needed to use a grandiose tone. It was a well-rehearsed and coveted tone, and not every emcee had it. Having done some voice-work in college for radio, Emery had somewhat decided that he would narrate the special himself. He had been practicing with Beth in the living room.

No matter how eloquent or inspiring the voice, the material itself needed to be personal, dear, and capable of summoning a certain sort of pride. A midwestern sort of flavor. Emery had scripted a fifty-two minute odyssey that conjured a Green Hills as heartfelt and American as the Alamo. He needed only to convince Frank Gill to light the fuse, and the Emery's hour special would eventually hit the air. Today was the day that would happen. Mr. Gill had been given the script and, several hours later, he wanted to see Emery.

The office of the program director was as usual. Untidy and arranged in a haphazard way, with a wide lane from desk to door in better allowing the passage of a fat man. Emery entered the office and nodded in cheer. Mr. Gill gave a pained look and patted his chest, as if the belch he had been expecting had gone left at the half-way point. The Green Hills script was laying face down on the desk. Emery could see his own hasty notes scrawled on the back. The submission looked to have been turned over in shame, a sort of punishment, a young boy sent to the corner.

"Hi-de-ho, Frank. What do you think?" Emery asked, annoyed a bit at the accidental rhyme.

"Antioch, we have a bit of a problem. So uh, let's have us a talk."

"I don't mean to sound ungrateful, Frank, but could you stop calling me that?"

"You don't need to worry about sounding ungrateful; you _are_ ungrateful. You can sound that way all you want. But you work hard and I do respect that. I'll stop with the Antioch."

He leaned back in his chair. The swivel mechanism gave a great whine at this bearing of weight and its movement. Mr. Gill looked Emery over in an uncertain way, as if a very old doctor figuring out how to explain to a shy and optimistic mother the presence of cancer in her child. Emery's bad knee twitched and the nervous habit of clearing his throat was fought off. Mr. Gill sighed then, having found his velvet-gloves, having resigned himself to being kind in the approaching castigation. Emery could sense it, and a slight panic filled him.

"Asher, it's this way: Your stuff's too stilted."

"Stilted?"

"Yeah, see there's-"

"I don't understand. I detailed the hell out of that piece. And it's only the rough draft."

"Don't interrupt me."

"It's not stilted; it's just rough, is all. I'm not finished with it yet. By the time I-"

"Hey now, pipe down. You gotta hear this, so just listen."

"...fine. I'm listening."

"You seem to be missing the common touch, as it's called. You can't write Jane Eyre for Melody Ranch, ya bunny. We're lookin' for grass roots. You understand that, right? We have to stay close to the people."

"Yeah, like the people in Green Hills. They'd love this piece," Emery defended.

"Well, now, that may be true, but I can't break ranks for one tiny town. We make one town look that good, we're pissing on the next town over, and that next town buys things, you see?"

"You mean the ads. This is about the sponsors, then?"

"Some folks might not buy some things if we play favorites, understand?"

"Oh, I understand. Too much puff in the puffer, right? Well why not? We just write the next town a good script, too. We distinguish ourselves from the other stations. Raise the quality a notch. Make some money, while we're at it."

"Thing is, Asher, we're obliged to use the 'folksy' approach. We want our people to get their teeth into the soil."

Emery knew in a concise way what Mr. Gill was referring to by this statement. The folksy approach was a twangy, hick emcee that boringly strummed his trusty Southern Jumbo and said "Ah shucks, here's another one, friends" before twinkling into the next song. The approach was not orchestrated and did not savor theme, something all good writing was supposed to have mastered. Out with the tropes and any trace of a literary covenant, in with the grins and clichéd phrases. Simple writing for real folk, which was an overromanticized way of saying hackneyed, low-brow writing for morons. The audience did not consist of buffoons, however. They were merely treated as if buffoons. The approach that WKCR and many midwestern stations had was an informal one, in a Davy Crockett hat, and made of Silly Putty, not skill. That would be getting the teeth into the soil. That would make up those idealized grass roots the programming was supposed to portray. These scripts did not require a writer so much as a plough. He understood why this system existed, but had hoped with earnest to become an exception to it.

Biting his tongue, Emery nodded and agreed he would write a new piece for Green Hills. The look of uncertainty on Frank Gill suggested that the station manager had ideas on Emery's state of mind, and maybe not good ones.

FADE OUT:

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FADE IN:

Maury was in a daze, hovering over his work in the Red Room and working his pen like a chisel. When Emery entered, he glanced up and then quickly returned to his work. Emery sat at his desk and interrupted.

"Let me ask you something, Maury."

There was more than writing in the duties of a script man. The atoms that made up this particular sort of beast were fast and carried with them many responsibilities. Writing was only the home base in the staff-writer's game. Also required was the rummaging up of ideas, of notions and styles one might use in various sorts of programs. This at times gave the illusion, or delusion, of being open to the intelligent imagination a writer might, on occasion, possess. These moments of sudden inspiration, in part removed from the drudgery of trimming and cutting the guts from a page, were what Emery craved most. He savored the abnormal, the unique, and the layered nature of good tales. He felt himself there, working conceits into a story and showing more than the usual slugger match of text he was to supply a broadcaster.

"So ask," Maury said.

"You ever thought about doing free-lance?"

"I got a few pieces out there, sure."

"No, I mean just that. Full-time. Trying to make do with just the one campaign." Maury lifted his head at this and nibbled the inside of his cheek a moment. .

"Neh."

"Never?"

"Ah, my parents didn't raise a gambler, Em. Did yours?" Emery shook his head because he was expected to respond in the negative.

"I was just wondering if it ever crossed your mind."

"I'd forget all about that, Asher. Free-lance on the side, sure. But as an occupation? That has not crossed my mind. That's crossed _out_ in my mind."

The radio writer was a go-to font for amounts of fresh ink, or at least ink most recently spilled over from the source. Emery was counted on for a number of things, especially by Maury, who shared the job. It would be refreshing, perhaps excellent, to count only on oneself in the creation of a career. There was disaster looming, of course, but a chance for more. The Green Hills piece might go well at a station with a newer outlook, and these certainly existed. Emery was fatigued, however, with sending his side-stories to the various stations he kept note of and approached. He could potentially send the Green Hills piece to a program director anywhere, if he wanted to, while not having to work exclusively for the station that wanted it. Free-lance. Maury was right, however; it was a gamble no matter what prism someone choose to view it through.

The talk ended and Emery finished some revision on an adventure script Colgate had commissioned. When done, he fetched his coat and left the Red Room, the basement, the halls, and the station. It was a warmer day, but damp. The Sun felt useful, but he would not be out in it for long. He had been given, in addition to his varied scripts and day's routine, the chore of supplying gimmicks for an afternoon ladies' show recorded across the street. This had been going on for several weeks and it was time to check in with the show. As the afternoon stumbled above, he took a brief sojourn from the station, crossed the traffic, and made his way to the second station building. This structure contained the recording booths and live setups.

Emery had written a portion of a show that was on-air at that moment, and decided to take a few minutes to hear the end of it, get perspective on how things were happening between page, actor, and microphone. A few minutes were all he would need. This was a refresher experience he brought on himself every now and again, and it kept him fluent with the foibles of his text when brought to the air, and the always budding idiosyncrasies of the script format. He caught the end of the performance, having misjudged time by several minutes.

John Bellamy, the emcee of the show and a man Emery had met many times over the past months, was a mildly literate revivalist. They had found themselves moving down many conversations in the past months, and with each, Emery liked the man a little less. Bellamy was the sort one might have called a tent-preacher. Not so much anymore, however; this emcee had a long history of religious travel and occupation, back into his childhood. He had sold bibles at the start, traveling with his father, who did the preaching. The two of them had opened a small church in Oakland, Nebraska, but didn't like the Swedish influence, and after a few years left their church behind. They traveled again, preaching the mid-west to its edges and back. In time the son usurped the position of evangelist, replacing his father, and at some point had set up in just about every town within a thousand miles of Cedar Rapids.

Bellamy had grown up using tents, private homes, churches, and even a few warehouses in spreading the word of God with his father. They started up wherever they could, giving the loud gospel, and scuttling, at times, into prophecy. Bellamy had come up from that and now spoke in a fetching, surefooted voice through a microphone, his 'congregation' as far reaching as Denver. His tent was now in all the towns at once. He was a radio-vangelist, as it were. The coyote had left the plains and now lulled to his rabbits in their very homes. Despite the particular substance he advocated on air, off the air he was cocky, sneaky, and always seemed up to something. Emery was no fan, but wrote some of the bits John gave for the sponsors.

Of more immediate fandom were the near-dozen women in the audience booth who had gathered to watch Bellamy perform, as was common. Though anyone hearing the broadcast would have no knowledge of it, the preacher had devastating good looks and a grin that could reach through the glass into the audience room and grab each woman at the knees. Most of those present returned each week to catch his show. Their fondness and the way slight gasps and chuckles left their mouths reminded Emery of a certain sort of girl he had noticed back in college, the captivated one that never said what she truly felt because what she felt inside, what she _was_ inside, were a person to know the look of it, was heated, raddled with infatuation, and ever so numbingly hungry.

After sermon, the master of ceremonies closed his show with a three-minute affair of asking prayers and blessings from all the world for the spiritual benefit of various things within it. Bellamy seemed so sincere that one of the women began crying. Another woman, who appeared rigid in her small tricorne hat and practiced posture, seeing the weeper, looked to attempt the same. Perhaps this was in competition, to see who had been moved more by the damnation-uttering man. The second woman's lip quivered beneath her tiny nose, but she was unsuccessful. She simply did not have any tears prepared.

Eyes half-closed in a sort of triumphant reverence, the emcee closed-out the performance and was cut off. He exited the recording booth at program's end. The women crowded into the hall to meet him, as many of them did each day. Bellamy exuded a practiced cheer and performed various forms of smile as he opened the door and entered the hallway. He had donned that slouch fedora he always wore when outside of the broadcasting room. The hat looked good on him but gave him the look of a businessman on a camping trip who could not be bothered to go a day without a hat. Bellamy walked amidst the women, this group of admirers who parted in the narrow hallway, allowing his passage. He offered hellos and thank-yous, placing his loose hand against their upper arms or, occasionally, waists, bracing them with a smile and stronger greeting. His smiles neither faded nor decreased in charm for the duration of this greeting session. Several of them gave him a look of familiarity that, to Emery, seemed more intimate than was customary, even for the adoring fans of John Bellamy.

These women were not good at keeping back their sighs and fluttering eyelashes, though perhaps did not wish to, which bothered Emery. Their presence and mannerisms gave off a sense of worship, which in the basic meaning was not so troublesome, as the man for whom they were doting was a staunch preacher, a person for whom the presence of worship was somewhat elementary, a tool in use for the duties of his occupation. Behind this meaning, however, there was a sense that these women admirers held a form of worship _for_ him. This made one wonder if the ladies present were attending these weekly sermons more for the specimen of the preacher than the subject of his evangelical extrapolations. Did they not realize the obviousness of their sexual want just then? The covetousness? Perhaps some of them did. One never knew.

Bellamy nodded to Emery and the two exited the hallway, leaving the women behind but for one who waited at the base of the approaching stairwell. As the two men passed, she spoke with a look of intrinsic respect across her eyes.

"A wonderful show," she said, watching the two men as they made their way up the stairs. To Emery, there was a strange but humorous allusion in this, something about a man of God rising upward and leaving his faithful below.

"Thank you," the evangelist responded over his shoulder. They reached the office on the upper landing. As soon as she and the others were out of sight, the reverent, soulful expression left the preacher's perfect face entirely and he began unrolling his sleeves. He slouched a bit before sitting down in his chair with a groan and letting out his gut. Emery sat down, as well. They both lit cigarettes, settling an ashtray between them over small talk across Bellamy's desk.

The writer then began rummaging for the gimmicks he had thought up earlier, for sponsorship during the evangelist's show. Finding ways to advertise during a sermon was a tricky business, often offensive if not handled correctly. Emery had learned the hard way that this required a lot of planning and caution. Before he could begin to relate a new round of ideas, however, Bellamy gave Emery a wink, pointing at the stairwell they had ascended and indicating the woman they had met at the base of it.

"I wonder if she lays?" the preacher mused.

FADE OUT

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FADE IN

Emery set to task red-lining his Green Hills script in the writer room. After a length of torture that involved changing the words 'lighthearted' to 'good', 'a generous and gentle community' to 'a pleasant place', and 'a people with an excellent faith in both the region and the means of wondrous Ohio', with 'happy residents', Maury entered the room with a box of papers.

"Here we go," he said, "one for you and one for me." After a moment of picking certain papers from the box, he handed the rest to Emery.

"I got Ford. You got somethin' new. Supposedly, that huckster crap can cure anything from cataracts to ugly," Maury said.

"Oh yeah? Who do I have?" Emery asked, searching through the disordered sponsor packet of pages.

"That Catalina stuff. You ever take it?" Maury asked. Emery found the title sheet and located the product name: Catalina's Fifty-Eight. He grunted.

"No. Beth has, though. Says it tastes like stale licorice and woodstain."

He spent several minutes looking over the treatment, tone, worksheet, and general expectation for the program. What the Catalina people had in mind was an audition show. Contestants were to be brought in to try the patent medicine and then rave about it. Catalina's Fifty-Eight was loaded with alcohol, around 28% by volume, and boy did they have testimonials to offer. There were three pages of them, each more grandiose and phony than the last. This is what the 'contestants' were going to say, all in their own, legitimate opinion, of course. _Now how about that! I really am feeling so refreshed by this. It's like the Fifty-Eight recipe has actually turned off the switch to my arthritis! I can't believe it. Thank you for this wonderful new product!_

"One of these days, I'll get the car sponsor and you'll end up with this shit."

"Keep dreamin'. Seniority has its perks, Asher."

"Did you look at this? It isn't a show, it's like a devotional. Some self-righteous, half-hour commercial spot," Emery said, "Bellamy should host this."

"He'd do it if they paid him enough."

Emery made it into the second paragraph of the worksheet and a hollow sensation filled him. His gut turned as he read: _This will be a program for the people. We'd like to see a real grass-roots approach that is popular and close to the soil._ Frank Gill was there, in his mind, leaning back in a chair and groaning with a mouth full of hot dog. The program director had likely read this program pitch earlier in the day, hence the language he had used during his short meeting with Emery.

Somewhere in the bellows of Emery's gut, the universe began to laugh. Truly laugh. The future was here, all of it, an unending pattern of yokelism and cracker-barrel waggery. This was the marketing of an extended, pious phonytale to people who wanted it fast. A people treated to no less than extravagant claims of wonder and capitalism, but behind every line of contrived script, in the damp basement of every show, the people were but a demographic considered to possess no more reasoning than the characters in an Autry song. Emery was going to clatter a typewriter for this crowd until the end. His want for more and his need for a gamble would always be in evidence, the screws in his neck slowly turning into his brain. Worse, he would have to act pleased to do this, as if a zoo exhibit's scrawny puma rolling over and batting his paws, an animal of ferocity pretending to be no more than a large housecat, all to get the passing crowd jabbering. He was to fake it for the audience and soften their eyes, feigning sincerity and bored nearly to death.

Emery was either going to deny economic sensibility, or even common sense, and loose himself from the yoke of radio gimmicks to write dramatic shows, or he was going to bed down with the commercial world and thank it mercilessly, succumbing to the surf of each new rage and medicine. He would either free-lance in the mediums of radio and television, or double-shift for every new preacher show, every triple-faced cheap-jack to release their foul sanctimony on the air. He would write as he felt intended, with the full measure of his ability and thought, or scratch with red, strapped to the approach so characteristic to radio-writing, his work pandered down into the bottom-most possible basin of comprehension for an audience.

"Maury, I want to apologize in person, ahead of time, for the all the work you're gonna have on your hands this next week," he muttered.

Maury turned his head at this and looked over, at first irritated at the interruption, but then quizzical. The senior writer had been waist-deep in his Ford program.

"What work?" he asked.

"I won't be back tomorrow," Emery concluded. The senior writer's eyes widened and he quickly set his cigarette in the ashtray, standing up.

"Whoa there. Wait a minute. Now Em, you can't do that."

"I'm sorry. I'm quitting," Emery said, convincing himself.

"Ah buddy, not now. Not right now. I'm already up to my knees in this shit; and it's only Tuesday. I can't handle your work, too."

"I know; I wish it were different." Maury did not accept this statement.

"No. You have to finish your programs. You gotta finish 'em. You can quit next week when we're caught up. Just wait another week," he advised. This had the tone of a plead.

"I can't. It's now or never, Maury. I'm sorry," he said. This was remarkably selfish of Emery and he was more than aware of it. Guilt was festering. Maury's mouth grew tight and he fought back a few insults. At heart, Maury was a considerate and understanding man that reminded Emery of his own father, except that Henry Asher had never been able to hold back his temper when truly angry. Maury could.

"So you're just- oh, you son of a bitch. Right now? You're doing this to me _right now_?" Emery nodded.

"Damn it, Asher. Is this the free-lance thing? Is that what's happening, here?"

"I have to see if there's more for me. I- I don't like this, Maury. What I do here."

"'I don't like this'," Maury mocked.

"Come on, now."

"Asher, you're killin' me. I can't make you stay, but you're really killin' me. You thought about what it's gonna be like to tell Frank?" Emery had not.

"I'll tell him at the end of the day."

"He's gonna pop you right in the mouth." This was likely. Emery thought about this aloud:

"Well, I think he knows I'd clout him one back. Because I would. I _think_ I would. And Frank Gill isn't so young anymore."

"I should hold you down for him."

Maury returned to his desk and retrieved his cigarette from the ashtray, had a long, contemplative drag, slowly shaking his head. Emery reached into his pocket and found his own pack. After a slow filtering summary of the various assignments and scripts in the room, the disorder of pens and bins about, Maury rubbed his eyes before exhaling smoke and blinking. After a moment, he lifted his chin and spoke.

"Okay. All right, Em. I guess I get it. You have to do what you have to do."

"Thank you for understanding."

"I don't understand. And I'd like to go cut up your tires right now. But I just can't yell at a vet, and... well, you're an all right guy. Stubborn asshole, maybe, but all right."

"Your compliments are double-edged."

"Yeah well, a little more notice would have been better. That would have been the right thing."

"I'm sorry. I didn't want to do it like this," Emery said.

"Sure, you're sorry. Sorry and more sorry. Don't use up all your apologies just yet. This is the easy part; I'm a pushover. See, you still gotta tell Frank. And then? Shit, you're gonna have to go home and tell your wife, you poor fool."
**Chapter Seven**

His speaking was only disrupted from the ache of his jaw in a marginal way. The dull throb that had resulted from Frank Gill's meaty, pugilist jab had diminished to strong degree, but there was still a tension at the right-side joint. The fat man had moved quick, struck Emery, and then just stood there, as if all was done. Frank could have gone for the eye or nose, made Emery look the beaten part for a few days, but had chosen to make it smart and be done with it. Frank was Irish, and there weren't many Irish people in radio; the employer had gotten where he was by being good at surprising people. Emery had a brief, military history in lightweight boxing, but the swiftness of Frank's jab had surprised Emery quite expertly. He supposed he deserved the punch for a several reasons, and smarting off had not been the right way to approach Frank Gill.

He sat with Beth in the warm, fry-scent of the Howard Johnsons near their home, continuing to attempt an explanation that would convince her he was sure of himself, in the good way, not the bad, and that she could be confident that all would be well. So far, what had dribbled from his mouth had none of the feeling he wanted to impart. He kept talking, however, gassing on and rephrasing. He had no route but to talk out his hope. This was proving quite difficult.

Emery was annoyed with himself for not knocking Frank around afterward. He could have with ease. Instead, Frank had seemed so small, so needy and inconsequent. The program director fit his role and duties, and he was proficient, but no one cared much for him. Frank only represented the management and direction behind the airwaves. He settled the programs, had them recorded, and then he pushed them into the transmitter that they might undulate across the air and reach the receiver in every midwestern home. As a program director, Frank had none of the clout that the fantasy in those programs offered, the actual thing being made. Making and producing were beasts of differing blood.

Emery knew that the gratification of punching his arrogant boss would be temporary, but the damage it would cause his name and future work would be long-lived. A hard-boiled attitude was simply a necessity to Mr. Gill's job. Emery had chosen to leave in a troublesome, sudden manner, as well. A man might take a punch now and again for leaving things in a bad way, and that small bit of violence made it so that Emery no longer had to feel guilty over quitting. Everything was settled with the station.

Now Emery had to face the last and larger repercussion: Being unemployed, and by choice, not ill luck. This made him three parts fool to but one part entrepreneur. He was a husband and newly a father. Rebecca was an adorable infant, making her feats to the day: Opening eyes. A tiny cough. A laugh. Turning over. Quitting his job was an awful idea, but it was done. His incentive now would be to provide for his family through free-lance, and having a young, struggling family was a very strong motivator. He would write all night long tonight, and tomorrow night. Every night. He could not allow himself to fail; too much was on the line. He bit his lip and swallowed. Too much was on the line for him to have quit his job, in fact.

Emery wriggled his jaw to the left and right for a moment, trying to assuage the tautness, and then he cleared his mind and restarted. Beth was waiting to hear him out, but none of his pitches seemed to be appropriate. She knew better. There wasn't a pitchman alive who could sell her on less income. Her upbringing alone barred this. One might sell her on a bogus appliance, or a swig of Catalina's Fifty-Eight, but quitting a job was not something for which she could be easily relieved. Worse, the previous few false starts had given her all she needed to know: He had quit over some hair-brained plan to climb high. He had jumped out of a tree and now eyed the moon from the ground, moving ten steps back for a supposedly plausible million steps forward.

Beth's family thought career ascension a grand thing, but that it occurred by nestling-in somewhere, and climbing from that spot. One could not climb, they thought, if one didn't have a place from which to reach the first, established rung. They were somewhat correct. Free-lance, no matter how he had tried to explain it to her father in the previous two years, had always come off sounding like a euphemism for shiftless and unemployed. Beth had found a babysitter for Rebecca, so they could talk alone, but Emery found himself wishing the baby was present. There was no buffer between them. She watched him and he squirmed.

He was a small boy, one that knew he was in a lot of trouble for breaking a very expensive window. Beth's question of why he had quit was ever-present, of course, and saturated the air more than the greasy scent from the restaurant kitchen, but her question of why his altercation with Frank Gill had turned physical was more available for an immediate answer.

"Well, it's funny, sort of. He said 'you sheeny ass, I have half a mind to paste you one.' And you know I- I can't stand him, so I said, 'Half a mind sounds about right,' and so then he _did_ paste me one. I think my father would be laughing right now." Beth shook her head slowly.

"But everything is done now," Emery continued, "And see, it's really a swell thing, because now we have a fresh start." Her lips parted slightly and a sigh escaped. It was the sort of utterance that indicated it had many extended siblings and they would soon follow.

"Emery, please stop saying 'we'. I didn't quit your job. You didn't even bother to talk about it with me."

"Of course. You're right. I- you know, honey, the truth is that a man could make a lot of money free-lancing right now. We've done it before, I know. I mean, I've done it. But it won't be like that, this time. See, that was only part-time, so I only made part-time money, which is always bad. And I was only focusing on radio. I'll be doing it full-time now, so we'll make better money, and... so _I'll_ make _us_ better money, sorry, but because I can write day and night, and I can pull in more than a lot of the other writers."

"If you say so, Emery."

If he said so, because he was the only one making decisions. He had not consulted with her. Beth could create a delicate sort of stab.

"I know should have talked it over with you. It happened quickly, but I should have called," he admitted. She said nothing.

"Honey, I'll get more work. And after awhile, I'll get enough work to have a name for myself, which will get me even better work. The market is big now, and television is taking off, right? I'll focus on television instead of radio this time, and- and it's possible. I can make this happen, I'm sure of it," he jabbered.

The damnable timing of the waiter separated Emery from a response. Beth smiled politely and made her order, and then he followed suit.

"And to drink?" the waiter asked. Beth only shook her head mildly.

"I think I'd like a medium-" Emery began, stopping when he saw Beth watching him. She seemed mildly intrigued with his order. He swallowed and a certain shame overcame him. Beth said nothing and he cleared his throat. Everything was a bit different, even at the outset in a Howard Johnson's.

"Uh, water is fine," he rephrased. The waiter ushered off with the orders and he was again in solitary with the unresponsive Beth Asher.

It had been an errant wish in the past, his frame in the midnight hour bat-winged over a typewriter on the kitchen table, trying to dent a page or ten and sending it over all the hell and high water. This would have sufficed him had he the instinct to fit. He did not. A certain portion of him, designed to be creative, was also the mask of a deeper and less certain trait, one of being his self, of attaining more than what he held, and being greater than his sum parts and abilities. It was a peculiar need, formed in part from arrogance and in part from compulsion; some called it 'drive'. Pure and declaratory, needling and hungry, at times a burden and at other times a sort of blistering dynamo, it was drive and it was in him. That those extra-occupational scripts and shows had only been successful in the basest sense had only augmented their economy. His stories had added some income, but not provided much; this free-lancing had been somewhat moot to his financial needs. Stories might provide in whole now, if he hit the ground in a sprint, if he knew how to move in that particular jungle. He believed he did. Then again, didn't every writer believe he knew how the system worked or where it was broken, even the most unsuccessful writer?

"The thing is, this is all- just that I can get paid for how I write, see? That's important, or else what am I doing with all of this? Paid. For what I write, rather than, well, just writing how I get paid. It's a good way and people are making it work now. Honey, I think I can do it. I know I can. It's not a risk I'm taking; more like... like embarking. I'll make all of this work. You do have confidence in me, don't you?" he asked. This was a cheap way to swivel his nervousness and guilt into something more easily dealt with: Scrutinizing someone else. He wished he hadn't asked her that question the moment it left his lips, however

"I did until this."

Quitting was not as sudden as it had seemed that day. He had been pondering taking this initiative and free-lancing for some time. It was over coffee and the opening of his second pack of cigarettes for the day, in the Red Room, weeks before, that he first began to truly allow the idea a potential in his mind. There had been a sip of coffee, a drag from the cigarette, and another glance downward at the _Home Journal_ , the article bearing the name of Paige Girdwood. His high-school crush had done as she had planned, accomplished something that she had told him she wanted. Many years had passed since high school, an entire decade. Paige had written her way into the thing she sought, and he was writing phony testimonials and hawkish commercials for Sheaffer's Air Filters and that finger-dip stuff that Calgon was pushing this year. Yes, Paige was appearing in _Home Journal_ as a free-lancer, and not a staff-writer, and she might never appear on those pages again, but for that month, there she was, after years of what must have been trial. The times were not fair to her gender, and the uphill assault she would have had to wage must have been a struggle of much scope. Good for her. He could do that, couldn't he?

Emery had read her article several times before returning to his own work, a praise piece for World Class Johnny's Autos. He scratched out his original 'sporting and affordable to match the wage of any consumer' and re-wrote it as 'great cars and they're dirt cheap, friends'. It was over coffee and the endless volley of smoke down his lungs that the seed had been planted, there in the Red Room with a ladies mag and bleary eyes. He didn't want to hawk ads anymore. The thought of indefinitely writing the things he was being paid for worried him. There was simply nothing of him in it, and what work did reach the air disappeared into nothingness at the start of the next program or commercial.

Beth had heard his complaining at home. She must have expected he would leave WKCR eventually. Was she truly so surprised and upset as she seemed, or was she putting him through the grinder a bit, as was likely right of her? He could have used some fatherly advice just then, but this was not to be. Perhaps William would have something to say on the notion of quit jobs and artistic gambles.

FADE OUT

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FADE IN

Things had changed. Freelance writing could be a protagonist, not just a bumbling side character taken out when the scene was busy. It could be the bread and butter if he worked it right.

"I know you didn't plan on this, and... and who does? Or, as it goes, having another baby so soon. But I know we're going to have a great family. It's a given, Beth, and you have to know that there's nothing I won't do to keep us well."

That was hypocritical, and a bit of a puffer, itself. He wouldn't work at the station anymore. He wouldn't write in the manner that, to date, had assured him pay. There _were_ things he wouldn't do to keep the family well, and with a second child on its way, the window of his opportunity was incredibly slim. He had not only quit his job, but he had done so with his wife pregnant and with an infant daughter to consider, which made his rash action progressively more foolish, if not entirely conceited. He had to make it work immediately. No room for coasting in, getting a feel for things, making the necessary alignments with the right people. He would have to go at it tooth and nail, and likely start blind. The thought of those coming days was fatiguing, but his imagination was woozy and his hands ready to work in the means he wanted.

Beth knew the world of free-lance writing quite intimately. Through college and for two years after, she had watched her boyfriend, and eventually, her husband, slap his face against the keys, free-lancing while testing parachutes for the Air Force, then while being a fry-cook, and then, having moved to Cincinnati, free-lancing while working more than full-time at WKCR, in attempt of propping his various works on the radio world. He had sold only six shows, and his best season had been just before giving up free-lance. Emery had netted the compulsory and dismal amount of two-hundred and ninety dollars in extra income, for the entire year. These were not bad scripts, but lacked the polish of his full attention, she supposed. They bore the hints of a writer with much else on his mind and a double-time job. He had decided to give up free-lancing and focus on a steady job as a New Year's resolution at the start of 1950. The new decade. The new Emery and Beth. And just in time for their soon-to-be nuclear family. Now, he was reneging on that resolution.

Beth had lived his writerly struggling enough, which made asking her to return to it even more troublesome. She was being asked to do what, in her mind, was probably a devolving, a retreat back to his manic pace, without the security of an accountable, wage-providing job. Emery's idea was like running back and forth across the highway and waiting to be picked-up by a car with a winner inside. It was panning for lusterless gold at the bend of a dry, suffocated river. She understood there would be lean days that drove him to dipsomania, and fragrant days that drew him to pride. Free-lance was educated lottery, and there was no telling where the numbers might fall, no definition of a well-placed bet. His confidence was all that served to pamper this, but it was not, in general, assuring. The incessancy of this confidence actually made him seem a bit insecure, which was worrisome, if not dubious.

"We'll be fine. I just need a little time to make things happen, for all three of us," he said before catching himself and correcting, "I mean all four of us."

Beth nodded and let her gaze leave the Howard Johnson's. Her eyes through the window at the pass of cars were a mind deep in thought. She was twenty-three and four months into a second pregnancy. These things were heavy stipulations in her thinking, and made for a heft of uncertainty.

Emery was antsy, so leaned back in his chair and glanced around the restaurant, letting her be, dodging the stiffness in the air for a few moments by examining his surroundings, checking his watch, thinking up boy and girl names for the baby only five-months away. Near him were both the well-dressed and the plain, those eagerly beginning at their meals and those full, picking a bit, having been satisfied. All of them by his immediate impression were steady. All with paychecks, whether great or small, that provided at the least, just enough. Through the kitchen's pane-less jalousie, a head emerged. Lieutenant Merrill of the Confederacy. His cap had been replaced by a cook's hat and saber with a silvery spatula. He eyed his protege, Emery, with a sigh and slowly shook his head before returning attention to his fry-table and the incessant flipping of seasoned burger.

"I love you," Emery said, then. Beth stirred and looked him over in thought.

Writing free-lance was like bleeding, and his emotional stability while active in it had been shaky. His frustration with writing would at times corner him, give those great wallops one knew to expect and yet could not dodge. The route he now proposed (by embarking on it) was an uncertain future, as well as disregard of a certain past. Free-lance. He felt he knew it better, and could make ground this time, and not fall into the no-hoper shoes, but this semi-qualified assurance in him did not alter that Beth Asher was married to a man who's pluck and poise, his very confidence, might be drowned and left to the silt with that ever deep, tidal motion of rejection. These would come often, the rejections, just as they had before. With that particular, slow tide would creep Emery's more dilapidated moods. Bad days would come, predictable only in that they would strike at noon, and begin with a postman's uniform.

Beth lightly took his hand and gave it a small squeeze before offering a wink. Then she released the hand and lifted a fact-card from the table's center, began reading mildly to herself. That was all. No talk, no rebuttal, and no exposed nerve. No permission, no denial, just life. She was adept at reading the score, had done so, and said nothing. Their financial future, for the time being, would be entirely on his gamble. It's what he wanted, and it was what he would get. She chose not to resent him for it, but she would judge.

Outside the Howard Johnson's, wood-grain guitars struck the ground, raining from the grey above and shattering each in a lush ministry of twang. Medicine bottles collided with boy-howdy crooners atop carts and buildings, breaking their glass and gushing out in paint-spatters of licorice and booze, dripping down on worksheets and hot-dogs and flatulent, pre-written testimonials. Knee-slapping, hayseed gags riffed across the air, carrying by their loft a gaggle of used car flyers, these in turn torn to bits by the plummeting weight of corpses, every evangelical, go-lucky emcee in a loose crumple to the ground. All of it raining to the floor and washing away into a cheering, requisite obscurity. Frank Gill rowed through this in his slow, smoldering canoe, looking for an ashtray. So long, Red Room. Farewell Green Hills. Thank you for listening, thank you and good night.

He sighed and watched Beth's eyes read the fact-sheet, loving her more than ever. Whether the waves in the distance would be riotous or comatose, or the stores of his mind prove fertile or bankrupt, he had now set out his skiff, that he might find a fleet, somewhere, in need of him.

He had launched a fictional career.

**Chapter Eight**

The age of television was no longer in its infancy. The cathode device and its all-to-needy antennas were not fed or burped when there was trouble, but programmed the more, expected to walk and attempt speaking like the rest of us, to understand repercussion and to act, in the least, cute or distinguished. The primitive root of Philo Farnsworth's medium had been dug out and washed, dipped in chromium, and now sat exposed in the nation's recent past. What was needed anymore were accords and momentum, proof that people were represented not simply well, but with realism intersected with drama.

"Em, this chicken has turned. Can you go to the grocery?"

"Sure. I'll take Rebecca along."

Television might give people an on-air existence more comprehensive than the cartoon-like caricature with which radio had slapped them, and perhaps this new medium might have the gumption to keep bettering itself. More stage might be present with less treatment, a little bit of the outside world one could watch without entering it. Television was an attractive toddler. What remained was to see if this system was going to grow up dim and compulsive, or take on the characteristics of intelligence and art, aspects that radio seemed, in great mischief, to have lost overall, and traits that the film industry had gobbled up, digested, and relinquished. Radio was subdued and most projects Hollywood touched bore strong elements of remedial copycatting and the "do-like-the-previous" mentality. Hollywood had its masterpieces, and radio still aired Oboler and Chayefsky and the serial dramas, but these were becoming the exception rather than the rule. Television had not yet fallen to overwhelming commercialism, not yet, and was too young to pander itself past its lively core.

This strange childhood of the television industry was causing much consternation for program directors in the medium. They knew they wanted something to come of it, and they wanted to aim high, but no one really knew what to do with the system, or how it should work. The television was lodged in a ridiculous number of homes now, so there would certainly be advertisements to put on them, and money to be made in stacks, but beyond this... what sort of programming was there? What _could_ there be? Drama seemed natural enough, but wanted to be something beyond what radio and Hollywood were doing with that genre. Television might serve shows well, episodic stories and serials as in radio, with news and sporting events, but then given the effort and budgeting, the storytelling and dynamism that was often put into the motion pictures. And what _about_ the motion pictures? Shouldn't they be shown on televisions once they left the theaters? It could be a place for them to reside, instead of being forgotten at the end of summer. A movies could have its general run and then retire to television, making more money and staying relevant longer.

"William wants to visit, hon. I told him September."

"Oh? How is William?"

"Good, I think. He says he'll be bringing that girl he's been seeing, Helen."

"That sounds serious, then!"

"Oh, I bet he proposes by the end of the year. I know my brother too well."

Emery made his necessarily small attempts at submitting to various networks and stations, adding more work to his reservoir as he did so. Within several months, he had increased his submissions near ten-fold. He began to get a feel for the current, which shifted without clemency and dodged one's ability to anticipate it. One could navigate the waters, but not predict them. He also bought script copy from various broadcasters, putting him deeper in the monetary hole, but deriving a strong sense of what others were writing.

He began to observe that most writers handled the television script in the most natural way, for a stage. He took notes. The writers that caught his eye seemed to build stories based on what they already knew about writing for performance: They wrote stageplays and adapted older plays for a small screen. They tried writing short cinema. They wrote for the theater, but with a nudge of knowledge in Hollywood's poses, and with slots for commercial as in radio. After all was roughed down, they scrambled their brains trying to figure out where on that stage they could stick a camera. This worsened when certain programs began using more than one camera, and the use of directives gained power.

"Get it in the sink, hurry! What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking there wouldn't be that much oil to drain."

The stage play was an ancient art, and utilized actors that could carry in voice and long strings of memorized lines, in order that the audience might hear each one, but on the screen, this format was overbearing and too sentimental, too dramatic and coated every scene. A play's result had but the single view, whereas the motion picture product had angles, direction, and scenes that unfolded outside of one's vision until the moment a certain cut would show them. Television was attempting to be as its earlier progenitor, the theater, and taking account of tactics borrowed from radio when it came time for news and announcements. All of it was quite loud and overly enunciated. Television was adamant about being noticed. This was fine for those things requiring the broadcaster tint, or the thespian's most live art, but regarding story, the pace and method of television was thus far inept. Live stage did not translate onto a screen, as Hollywood had learned in its own, raucous start.

"Still not a peep."

"Well, she'll talk when she's ready. She'll say 'Oh, mother dear, I am quite tired. Might I have a nap?'"

"If she's anything like you, she'll never nap. 'In a minute, in a minute, in a minute," she'll say.

The stage play system ruined the mode and suspension for screen drama by giving everything from the calm talk of two people in a quaint dialogue, to the slow drive down an old road in the cutout of a car, the obtrusive feel of an outburst. It was unnerving, sudden, and felt important even when it was not. The actors nearly shouted their lines and their voices carried a clear resolve, cameras staring right into their faces. The thespian approach, so vital at the start, now bore the look of the overly dramatic and forced. No one wanted to be acted at while sitting at home. An audience wanted to watch, up close if possible, but remain invisible. They were not asking for a night out and a show. They were _home_ , the place of relaxation and day's end. They were asking for something to look at while they sat on couches, in their quiet p.m.

The look of Hollywood, the tradition and design of a stage play, the informative and highly serialized nature of radio... all of it was being wrapped and shot and placed on the air with the feel of a rushed magazine article. This somewhat fit in with the domestic feel of being home for the night, but was cloying and sporadic. The living room was no place for the blockbuster sensation. Television was a different beast, and its mannerisms had yet to truly evolve and take form.

"William! Ah, it's good to see you, brother. How was the flight?"

"We're here. There was a lightning storm near the end. Scared the life out of us."

"And you must be Helen. Hello!"

The close-up. The extreme close-up. Panning. Zooming. Dissolving and wiping and fading. Dolly shots and all the angles. No stage-play had ever had so much intricacy in direction. No curtain needed to slide across an out-of-view, rusty rail to expose something hidden, no large prop needed to move; you simply panned the camera over to a portion of the set that didn't exist before. No baritone shout was needed to show a man was angry, no jerk of his body as if by a temper's seism; like cinema, you went right up to his face and saw the frustration through the lens, up close and real. Hollywood had mastered these properties of cameras and actors and story. The quiet scenes had evolved. With television, the drama of expression could be seen no matter where the public seats were, because those seats were front row no matter where the signal reached. Television could be intimate with strangers by the simple device of a zoom on a person's eyes, and in the home, where intimacy was more expected or favored. The audience did not see the set, just the frame. You didn't have a shocking sound or visual get their attention so they might see the man sneaking up from stage left. You turned their heads for them. To center stage, the upper boughs, even behind them. You told the audience what to see with the clever use of a man behind a glass-faced machine and the reeling of film.

Emery knew that writing plays for television was not enough for the industry or public to consider a television writer a playwright. The writers were anonymous and hidden. It was rare to display those rustling plumes of story between the longer programs of wrestling and football. Their names did not often appear in credit. As Emery watched program after program, learning about the networks and the nature of television, he saw so few names of writers, instead reading the names of directors, producers, and the smaller names so quickly ignored by most of the public. The often uncredited writers typed out slender fictions between the folds of a televised, real thing.

"This jackass sent me a rejection for someone else's script. Is mine still under consideration, you think?"

"Can you call him?"

"I tried, the number is disconnected. Operator can't get through."

For Hollywood, immediate-nonfiction did not exist beyond the newsreels at the beginnings of films. Everything was a production, required much time, even when rushed, whereas the grit of a television was its proclivity to show you something actual within a very short time of the event occurring, or possibly live on a short delay, as in radio. When Stanford played Washington, one could watch the quarters unfold, every play and call and mad dash, not simply listen through a speaker and a touchy dial. These events were real. They were more than elsewhere. They were before the viewer. Right there. Radio had functioned in the second hand, a world of gossip and hearsay. People heard the crowd and _commentary_ of a boxing match, but were not given the boxing. The discreet public was not there; people were eavesdropping. Hollywood depicted a choreographed reality and one could go and see it, could admire the depiction. Television was unlike these formats. When television showed a thing, the public turned and watched, even idle, from the front row as all-American McColl cradled a lob of leather and scuttled his feet all the way to the zero yard. No other medium could show you a game that was happening in the present.

For every event of the world taken into frame, there were other shows, limited and small, that had honest-to-God writers. They were behind the camera and the ten inch screen. Off the playbill. Some were radio writers who were adventurous and trying a new thing. Some were film industry writers tired of that particular sort of grinder into which their stories were fed. These writers were a new breed, but a mongrel one. From his naturalist rostrum, Chayefsky had called the television play "the most perishable item known to man", and Goldwyn out in Hollywood had said the format "raised writing to a new low". Emery was attempting to enter that particular sort of arena where bugs were sent to fight: A glass jar with air-holes in the lid, a media captivity where the writers, the belligerents, often went un-named. The medium had no longevity for which it might look upon and use to compare itself to the silver screen or 'legitimate' theater. It had only hope and unending attempts at more, while being staffed by people who disagreed on nearly everything about it.

"I think Vivian's sick; she feels warm and she's not eating. We need to call Dr. DeGan."

"Do it. He'd better show up sober this time or he won't like the way I treat him."

The traditional stage saw television as a bastardization of natural ability in favor of mass-production, and that a screen removed the métier of the antique stage: That physical bond between performance and audience. Hollywood glanced over its new, inbred cousin in the way a Bauhaus architect might look down on a hairy neandertal trying to drape leaves across the mouth of a damp cave and call it home.

To remedy the feel of insincerity and a separation between production and audience, shots could be used to drive the image close and personal, but beyond this, there were live shows now. Programs with an audience _in attendance_ added to the spectacle, giving the performance the feel of being real, a thing worth watching by real people who sat down in chairs for it, and not simply a toss-off to the screen. That the public in Minnetoga might hear or even see an audience in New York and feel a touch more to be with them was a smart and potent aspect of demographic wizardry. There were bare-bones productions filmed and sent out onto screens with great speed, anthology shows that packed a variety of stories into an hour, and now New York, not just Hollywood, began to find itself the seat of a filmed entertainment industry. Illusions and proximity were created with cameras and the new bag of tricks actors had gained, and behind all of these new abilities and reference points, all of these angles and affectations, were the writers, stealing from theater, stealing from cinema, and inventing their own, intricate form of extravaganza.

"Your mother called. She wants you to talk to your aunt about some sort of used car situation."

"Did she say what the situation is?"

The programs rode the air with great mortality, however. They aired and then were gone, so quickly and without a hope of longevity. The serials went on, for a time, but the singles did not. They were treated as inconsequent one-offs by the networks, tired acres in which to prop commercials and drill for a little more oil, and so these one-time programs became that more and more, fitting the mold needed to continue being made: Commercial fodder. These shows hit the radar of a viewer with the speed at which they would then vanish. They went on and off the air with so little notice; there was no ovation at the roll of the credits, no mourning once the show was laid down and the dirt shoveled over.

The television system had been born, but now searched for meaning. What was its reason for being? How might its techniques service the producers, the audience, or the world? What might someone like Emery, a prospecting writer, do with that medium and what might television offer in return? Emery kept his ear to the tracks and wrote his scripts, always with his thoughts falling to what television should be capable of, and what it might do with a story that other mediums could not do.

In that first year after leaving WKCR, his good luck had landed him several purchased scripts, though hard won. The first of these had been written before quitting his job at the station. The program was soon after sold to the National Television Network for a presumptive amount of money; nothing to be proud of, but a start. This script fit into an anthology show the network was running entitled _The Stars Shine Over America,_ and was filmed as the 11th episode in the series. Emery had sold them a story called _Barton Helms for Office_. A hundred dollars for All Rights, and the script was no longer his. The entire exchange happened through mail and in the extent of a single, terse phone call. He neither met anyone involved with the production nor was he required (or invited) to ever set foot in a studio. This production apparently aired, though he was not informed of when, and never saw it. A pleasant thing would have been to see it, and even his name in the crediting, if it had been included, but these things were not to be.

"The idiot nearly hit me, and I had Vivian in the front seat. He's lucky I didn't crack his head."

"Did he at least apologize?"

"Not until I told him to."

A second show aired later in that year, one he also sold to National, for an episode of _The People's Tales_ , which was more thespian oriented and shot with two cameras. Emery did get to see this one hit the screen in his home. The production was not choice, but came to fruition in the lowest, B-grade setup he could imagine. Due to money and no way to re-shoot certain portions, several lackluster deliveries and terrible scenes had made it into the final cut. Even the opening shot, which had been faulted due to a camera activated at the wrong time, went to air. This began the program with an extreme close-up of a second cameraman's ass. It was apparently the only shot they had and they couldn't go back to do it again, nor did they have time to cut it after making so many other, last-minute alterations. It was also likely that the director/producer simply did not care much. The conception of the series was erroneous and delivered the stink of mishmash, prone to ending without much culmination. The scripts were fair, and the writing existed in hints of a cohesive show, but one that only rarely achieved what the series, doting on itself, claimed to be in its tagline: Television Excellence.

That second show was at least more preferably elusive than the front-and-center nature of a wrestling match, but while the writing was sharp, it certainly needed more work. Always in the process of practice, and with his radio-writing background and the needs of his family cudgeling him in discipline, he wrote more scripts and sent them out. He focused at first on productivity, until he found himself with an output strong enough to begin the more difficult work of reinforcement, of trying to raise the caliber of his work through numerous revisions that could finally have his focus. His mode was to work until he had the shape of things, and then detail that work to confer with the shape. The night hours aided in this, and he often wrote more than one piece in a night. There was no protection for these works he wrote and sent, and the respect anyone might have for an original piece of television writing was ill-defined, and at best, simply credited. The payment was low, the sets were cheap, and the productions were contained in pauperized budgets and a dearth of materials. He had heard the stories of writers who had been rejected by a studio, only to have their script stolen and filmed under another name, but was lucky in that this had not happened to him. He would have to be careful and keep his eyes out.

"Honey, what do you say we celebrate? Go out and have dinner tonight?"

"Can we afford that?"

"I don't know if we can or can't, but I think we _should_ afford it."

"Call the bank first."

"No, I'm tired of calling them."

Like other mediums, television productions had their shills and overworked horses. The slow trickle of money in this form was tastier and hard to pass up in those rare instances it was offered. These writers sat on hand and re-wrote the work of others, double-shifting and scratching with red. They were Maury Aarons in television's own Red Rooms. The work-for-hire rights of the writing this produced paid steady enough to live in a certain security, and removed the gamble of free-lancing. Emery did not want this, but if the meal was tasty enough, and the material fair, he might concede to a job in this system. This was the ultimate truth of free-lancing, that once a show had been picked up, a writer was, for even a short time, no longer a free-lancer, but a paid specialist. The relative joy of this, when riding the back of an original script one had penned himself, was overwhelming and gave a writer a touch of meaning from the beyond. The slight taste of this made an addict quickly.

A third script was sold to _The Nash Television Theatre_ , which was one of the only hour-long shows to feature drama. The show shot its arrow far and the red eye it hit was one of quality. It did not miss but rarely. This was a place for stories more to Emery's savor. Working with NTT was simple and all the machinery was in place to create a drama. Emery was then ushered to New York, domestic class, to take part in the workings of the program, though not until the day the show was to air. A writer's presence was disliked and unwanted until it was too late to hear his upset at a script that had been butchered, or drowned in shoddy re-writes, or outright disregarded in favor of time and the most familiar sort of arc. The last-minute arrival of the writer was a warrant against what was perceived as an intrusion, like a lover showing up after all the flavor had been sapped from the tryst and the other party had moved on, a lover that did not ascertain itself an ex-lover.

"I'd like you to start smoking outside, honey. I'm sorry, but it's getting so smoky in here and the baby's eyes are watering."

"It's raining outside. I'll just cut it out for a bit. Is that good?"

That a writer might be invited to the last hour of certain productions was a small demonstration of faith. It was better than nothing. This was usually only offered to those writers whose stories had been transcribed by a camera well. Shows that turned out quite good and that a writer might praise. Emery's story for NTT had been prepared, shot, and was finished, ready to go out prior to Emery's arrival. The re-writes were not done by Emery, or any other portion of the production. They had been done by someone invisible and nameless on behalf of the studio, and they had been un-intrusive. Emery watched the show's screening and had a pleasant meal with the director and a writer that was being courted for another episode, Rudd something-or-other. Emery was a father in a production maternity ward, brought to the moment of viewing his wondrous child, then taken to dinner and told to go home. It was a healthy child, after all. No sense badgering it.

Still, there was more pride in having been picked up by NTT than with others. They understood the province of art, and often performed classic stories from beyond the usual Shakespeare, going further into the rind of great plays, giving air-time to Henrik Ibsen's controversial _Hedda Gabler,_ a rarely used work for its depiction of the New Woman, and exhibiting John Galsworthy's _For Love of Beasts_. Emery had a copy of this author's book, _Tatterdemalion,_ on his coffee table. In addition to a completion of the scout badge for knot-tying, Emery might now adorn his uniform with a merit badge in scriptwriting. To be included in a billing with those writers long dead but still so loved was a bolsterer of the soul and had imbedded a rather splendid amethyst in his literary dog collar. That these plays of great talents might be put on with an eye toward using authors no longer in the requirement of pay was overlooked by Emery. It was enough, at first, to be in such brilliant company.

"I heard today that the Nash Theater is putting on _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_."

"The poem? I wonder how they're planning on doing that."

"Beats me, but whatever they do, I want to know all about it."

He had never felt in his life to be at ease with a page, in the sense that he had never written without squaring off against the constant presence of compromise. His new approach contained less of the pander, less of that begrudged catering to the whims of some ill-conceived demographic. The new work was less contaminated, more natural. He was _in_ these new scripts, twisting the stories. He might, if he continued growing in skill, present for the American people the people themselves, allow them to shake hands, and in so doing, conjoin his work to a greater good that he might have, until recent days, dismissed as an implausible artistry for the few chosen princes of letters. His luck was not there, it seemed, but he could try. His love of writing tales only grew with each acceptance or rejection.

Beth's appreciation of his free-lancing grew with the pass of months, and her worries dulled. Her husband had found ways to make do, and he seemed to know the routes of his shaky profession enough to make sure something was coming in for the many things that went out. The scripts left his hands in an earnest joy and that hardship of creativity that afflicted so many. The typewriter accepted him and he wrote as he could, trying to better himself in whatever ways he was lucky enough to spot, and hoping that those places for which his words were weak might show themselves to him soon enough. They often did.

"You are, in fact, my shiksa goddess, and I believe, firmly, that my mother is beginning to grow fond of you."

"That's a lark. Susa grinds her teeth when I speak."

He began making money, yes, though barely enough to support a family of four. Beth had given birth in autumn, and Emery had found himself the proud father of two daughters. He was surrounded by girls, a certain form of excellence to him. With his two daughters available and both parents home each day, it was difficult finding a regimen to complete his work in his home, difficult to get time alone, yet somehow the presence of these two little ones, even sleeping, and Beth's belief in him, bolstered his urge to create. He became a night-owl, an oil-burner, the morning's "you're-still-awake?" sort. The struggle invigorated him. Emery's heart had learned a surefire openness that would follow him ever on: What luck, to barely make it, when his family was nearby to support and distinguish him. What great, wondrous luck. Or an unwittingly long con.

There were worse ways to spend a brain and heart. While the nightmares came to him with diligence, straight from the war's past and en route to his occasional sleep, he was alive and his fear in them was only temporary. The phantasms of those events he had witnessed, upon waking, would haunt him through his shower and search for coffee, but then be gone. Then he had time with his girls. While his knee at times felt the change in barometric pressure Ohio was so prone to, it was steady and accountable, and like his mind, was certain in its use. He was healthy, loved being a father, surrounded by his beautiful girls, holding his daughters in one way, and his wife in another. Love over all, it seemed. To Emery's reckoning, there were indeed far worse ways to have out a life, but so few better.

"Do you think we can afford to go to Cayuga this summer? Take the girls and maybe meet up with the other Ashers? I think William and Helen would enjoy a vacation."

"Not unless a big check has come in that you haven't told me about. Has one?"

"No. Not even a lying promise of one, lately."

He wrote his shows and kept his eye clean, typing away the hours and moments of summer, then autumn, on into winter and that prolific stream of works only reached by a strong precept of industriousness, a professional work ethic coupled with the passage of time. He was not doing well, but his head was above the unpredictable surface and he seemed able to keep it there, for the time being. Television divided its actions up into seasons, really, and free-lance was most-assuredly seasonal, but there was no true account of these divisions, or how many might fall in a year.

As the shows were chosen, or denied, and as the checks arrived, or did not, his name itself began to elevate into something tangible to him, a thing he might prosper beyond his self. The page at hand was almost as if a place, and not an act. He went there, where the lessons and truths of life could be free from the cold constructions of the old mediums, even if he was unable to accomplish this most days. The writing of these dramas and morality plays was a strange and universal place where the unexpected could hold court over the usual, an unclear place where people became the subjects of his whims, ethereally treated to their own hubris. This took place not in the night and day of production, smith for a paycheck, but in his thoughts and through scenarios, in a sort of supernal twilight all his own.

**Chapter Nine**

That the set-builders had constructed a set containing twelve tons of water and a mock-up submarine on a budget of crumbs was pioneering, and an assault against the lesser productions of late. Emery sat in his chair with a beer in his hand and watched the show. The cigarette returned to his lips until depleted, at which point he lit another, relaxing in his living room with Beth and watching the television. Anymore, his mind fell to synopsis and work when watching television. He was caught by whatever new stage-schemes he saw. Lately, there had been a mountain of them.

"Remind me to send this guy something," he said aloud. Beth nodded from the couch.

"It's absorbing."

"Just _look_ at that. It's like a real damn sub."

"What do you think it's made of?"

"Probably wood, metal, some cloth. The right lighting and angles and a lot of paint. Most of it is probably metal though, considering they've got actors walking around inside of it and nothing is wobbling. Look at that corrugated floor."

"I like the drips."

"Yeah, maybe they shot these scenes in a tank or a lake. I can't tell. Looks damn nice, though. What a producer. Budget must have been tip top."

"Who is it?"

"Ted Miller. He's an NBC guy. Usually works with a couple other guys, too; I know Byron Carr is one. But this one only credits Miller."

"Do you know him?"

"No, I sent one to Carr once. Remember that rejection that said I was too 'Ohio' and not 'meridian' enough?"

"Oh, that damn thing."

"Yeah, that was Carr. Or more likely his assistant. I think I'll try Miller, though. Hope something gets to him. I could send that piece on the governor's island; much cheaper than a sub."

The quality of television's interrogations with story was occasionally reaching high, and the overall looping of shows into anthologies was raising the tide of writing. The imagination was a bit less hindered, and locations for a scene were becoming more available as programs strayed from New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The nickel budgets were being stretched with utmost creativity, and writers were beginning to take advantage. The horizon was clearer and easier to see, and techniques were bustling forward like goats at the feed-bin.

The flexibility of things had increased. The box was growing to be more personal than theater, less grandiose yet more impacting, and without the superfluity and budgeting of the motion picture industry. The advertising revenue in this new medium was escalating to the point that low budgets might not be in the cards for long. The motion pictures were, by their format and nature, less able to accommodate advertisers, but television was ready to hold hands with the ad-man right from the start. Never before had a can of beans been shown to so many people at once. Commercialized television was the pitch of a radio salesman given the image of a billboard or magazine spread. Television combined these forms of advertising, setting them to motion like a film, and then it played this short film within the confines of a person's home, right there in front of the couch, and better, when people were in the mood to see things, when they were interested, when they might want to know about beans. The advertising world would soon have an ad-man in the living room of everyone who owned a television. There were nearly six million of these consumers, and that number was only growing. The popularity of television might soon give that medium the size of consumer-base radio had long called home. Television could supplant radio, and soon, if the people kept buying. With the effectiveness of the home screen and an ever-growing demographic, the ogre of massive revenue had opened up its eyes and the rumbling of its stomach would soon become a powerful force.

The increase in television's economy, and those reliant on it, gave rise to a commercial tractability. This attitude, when peppered with money, began to reanimate the old resolve, however, of sponsorship gaining control over the medium itself. Radio had been strangulated by this phenomenon of business, and the process was all the more steadfast with an encroach into television. Advertisers did not need to learn the medium. They had practiced their approach in radio. They knew to hire television men for television ads. They knew how to get what they wanted, and there was no learning curve for them. Emery had sold many scripts, and now made a fair living, erratic as it was, but even in the throes of this subtle success, the rules of an acceptable story had begun to be swayed by sponsorship.

CUT TO:

INT. SUBMARINE - TIME INDISTINGUISHABLE

Four people in tailored suits sit behind place settings around a metal, oval table, waiting to eat. They've already been presented the main course, which sits on the table before them. They now sit in a relaxed fashion, drinking from glasses of water and waiting to eat, staring at the extravagantly sized serving platter and its polished dome. ENTER FRANK GILL, in butler uniform. GILL waddles to the table, reaches over, and hoists the dome to reveal the meal at hand. The meal consists of EMERY ARCHER, nude, evenly browned in an oven, on his elbows and knees with his legs tied and a Red Delicious crammed in his mouth. His eye-sockets are scorched and the eyes are no longer in his skull, leaving vague, black pits.

FRANK GILL:

Told ya, kid.

FRANK then exits the room. The suits lick their lips and each address the immobile, browned writer.

SUIT #1, WEARING A BOW-TIE:

Say, you can't paint the soldiers so scared, Asher. Stebler's Motor Oil is paying for this production and showing men that scared might come off like the soldiers are cowardly, and that might make the company look un-American. No dice. Cheer it up. Tell a joke or somethin'.

SUIT #2, WEARING A NECK-TIE:

That Christmas Murderer you wrote likes murderin' too much. Kellogg's doesn't like those scenes. Take the murderin' out. Make him a blackmailer.

SUIT #3, WEARING A HORSE'S REIGN:

Asher, it's like this: Imperial Cola doesn't want those kids in the last act drinkin' milk. Know what they should drink, instead? Here's a hint: Who's payin' for this? Yeah, there you go. Think things through.

SUITE #4, WEARING A NOOSE:

Buddy, you're essentially calling half the damn country vultures to their faces. And just because they might be, in some sort of weird rhetoric, doesn't make it so you can just tell 'em that. Knobfield wants out unless you drop this ending, and word is, Airlines Pacific are gonna have a big problem with those people being on a cruise at the start.

EMERY mumbles from behind the apple and the suits reach for their forks and knives.

DISSOLVE TO:

Actors and actresses. These unique creatures had taken to the cathode ray tube and were now starting to give it their full capacity. When combined with a director that knew how to use them, to escalate them, the effect of good acting could mesmerize. Their trial had been won, and these individuals started to know the tell-tale climb in popularity that renown insists upon. Without the Hollywood system surrounding them, or the incessant spatter of radio producers in their ears, these performers had started into the television recognition game. All the programming began to glow with an even burn, particularly the episodic shows, the anthologies and serials. Families at home knew the names, looked forward to the next episode, the next show. Small-screen celebrity had begun, hot flames rising from the bare coals by which television had come to gain its access. People began to recognize the names of the actors, at times directors, and in rare instances, even a writer. An award was created for the medium, the Emmy, and that award was going out in a variety of modes each year.

FADE OUT

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FADE IN

The sets were multiple. No longer was a writer trapped with a stage-play setup, but could branch a story onto more than two sets and have as many actors as required, though the use of but a few was preferred. The tabloid presence of the dramatic dialogue was over, and now crowds could exist, arguments for eight, or even a scene showing the entire crew of a navy ship from a tall shot off the tower. A writer worked for one or more cameras that could aim any which way. The feel of dress in a program no longer had to feel like a few people in costumes, but an entire production in cohesive wardrobe. The characters gained depth and the scenes bolstered character. Like Hollywood, a producer didn't just hang a man into a set and have another man speak to him, but the right two men, in the right setting, and all with an eye toward a theme. Plots were becoming pregnant with significance, and their styles highly variable. Work was being put into everything, from the sorts of film one might use, to the look of a set and how to change it mid-scene, how to do more off-camera to enhance what was in frame. This may have been a gimcrack byproduct of other forms, but having come together with such force, and with such revenue raining down from advertisers, the television had usurped a place among the older mediums as a true, executable art.

Chicago and New York were darlings for their creation and the manner they had nourished it. Every hint of lust to a fade-out, every lasso, every gunshot, was a vivid butterfly flitting up from their hand in a period where gray neglect and cold doubt seemed to be usual modes.

CUT TO:

INT. ASHER HOUSE - DAY

EMERY stands with his back against the kitchen sink. His hair is sticking up from having just risen from bed. He sips from a cup of coffee and opens several envelopes, reading over each, one at a time, quickly to himself.

V.O. (VOICE OF BETH ASHER):

"Dear Mr. Asher, we would like to accept your script _Whirlpools_ for our program. If you would kindly..."

V.O. (VOICE OF PAIGE GIRDWOOD):

"Mr. Asher, _All the System_ is exactly the sort of work we want on a regular basis. Let's move along to..."

V.O. (VOICE OF WILLIAM ASHER):

"Sir, this is an unfair and wholly non-descript story. The boys in the Pacific went through much trouble and great harm to secure what we have today, and you ought not question what you clearly know so little about."

Through this process, we see EMERY go through two smiles before ending in a frown. He sets the letters on the kitchen counter.

EMERY:

Well, what do you know, anyway?

C.U.— We see EMERY'S face split up the middle and jaggedly tear apart to reveal a young Japanese man scrunching his eyes in pain.

DISSOLVE TO:

Cayuga Lake. The summer. A full week. This was his first time returning since childhood. A portion of him had thought this place would never hold up to his memory and its penchant for imaginary flight. He was so pleased to be wrong. The weather was splendid and he played with his daughters, splashing them the way he had splashed his brother, William, so long ago. Beth sunbathed beautifully and the family hiked the trails of Taughannock (one little girl in her father's arms), and Emery decided to make the trip to Cayuga an annual event, just as it had been when he was a child. The quick stays in New York for various shows he had written were eclipsed by the excruciating commute back and forth from Ohio. This drive was lonely and long, and he found himself missing his family much. Cayuga was a wondrous lull in the business of life.

"I think I'll take a look at that piece, tonight. About the carnival hanging. It's in the bag with my tackle. Maybe see if I can set it straight again," he rambled to himself, bored. Beth shook her head and gave him the upbraided look of a sudden change in mood.

"How nice," she said, her voice stern. He smiled and acquiesced.

"Okay. Understood. When we get back, then."

"When we get back." Vacation. He had promised, after all.

New York was always a night or so. There were times when the city only seemed to exist for this brief span, as if the mere act of exiting caused the city to vanish until he might return. He knew the city little, yet intruded upon it so often. When stepping into a studio, he often found his mood was out of place, a potato-scrounging rube in coveralls trying to fit in with a Wall Street cousin. While the visits were short, and all business, the travel was exhausting, and he did not want these ventures into New York to be as frequent as they were. There had to be another way. He had not reached a point where moving to New York was the better idea, yet hadn't enough clout to simply work from Cincinnati. Something would have to give way and he knew it would not be New York.

The drive grew only more tedious and numbing. There were about six-hundred and fifty miles between his home and the downtown area of New York City, which was too long to drive in a day, not while one maintained any sort of vitality or composure, but did require being driven in that amount of time. Including a stop to eat, his two, hard-won breaks for use of a public restroom, and most aggravating, the authority with which traffic could besiege his schedule, the drive took nearly twelve hours.

He would walk the sets, when allowed, only vaguely present, and get his dazed feel for the construction, for how his words were manifest into filmable reality. This loose information served him, built itself into the design of new stories, contributed to his ever-growing impression of what could be done on a set, while helping to disembarrass him of his previous, flawed notions. There were many of those in him, he found, and it was tough to remove them. He supposed this was how one learned a thing, a way of function, how one foraged in a business or trade, all the small bits becoming system.

The trips to New York gave his stories a more knowing construction, and thus an edge in acceptability. This felt to be pandering, however, and irritated him. There was no way around it; much of a script needed to be written for the producer and his interests, both creatively and marketably, not simply written for the public. A producer had different notions of the public than the writer, as was profitable and necessary. This eye toward the Big Man, while writing, only increased Emery's exhaustion. He had to work hard to maintain a semblance of integrity while still giving the little emperors their dainties. He had a role to fulfill, but he wanted to get as much of his own sense of good into it as he could.

If a story was strong, the author still played odds. If a story was good but also came off as being easy to shoot, if it _seemed_ minimal from a production standpoint, it had points over others. Anything that caused a municipal, commercial, or national spark of pride, anything that made viewers seem smarter or provided some sort of proof that these entities were as deserving as they felt they were... that was a network script. That was a trifle of writing with a much greater chance of being purchased. A decent script was still a decent work, but the odds were condemning. There were many decent scripts. Emery knew that a good story and a solid construction were not enough, unless one was hoping on the lottery style of making it, which did happen from time to time. No, a good script with a touch of _catering_ was better. The odds of an informed script being picked up by a studio were much higher when all the i's were dotted from the start and when the script had potential money as a forethought. Emery just needed to keep his ears open, push what discipline he had, and with enough coffee, not fall asleep at the wheel between cities.

The stories came from his mind and were at times granted a physical life, and he didn't even have to build one single item for a set. This was a given for a writer, but it still seemed a strange thing and Emery marvelled over it at times. When a script was accepted, and with any luck, a show produced, other people gave the story a physical reality. He could write a scene with a child in a tree-fort, and in the months to come, someone might build that tree-fort out of various materials, and then Emery would be there, invited onto the set, find himself sitting in the fort, interacting with something he had thought up, but not built himself. In this way, he could actually touch something, through time delay, from his own imagination, a detail taken from his mind and built in the physical. These brief moments granted him things he had never thought he would possess: A small amount of power and a certain importance, even minor. Some people were actually willing to manufacture the stuff of his mind. He could not help but cherish this, a bit.

The simple lines he typed in his small, Ohio kitchen were mattering, ever so briefly, in the productions of New York. This was a long way from the Boy Scouts or a Skytrain, his junior high presidency or experimental parachute testing, yet somehow not far off at all. He felt somehow to have returned in slight to those days of telling Paige Girdwood his little adventure stories, and his pursuits in New York felt wholly mission-based. He was making maneuvers into television. He could squat down for a moment on set, in tree-houses or airy towers, in castle libraries or jungles, and admire the work of so many hands. They were professional hands that were paid to collaborate on something he had written near his Westinghouse oven at three in the morning some random Thursday. They were hands of people he would never meet beyond simple hellos muttered in passing during short stays in a city that was not his own. He even appeared in credits, on occasion, when some of the hands did not.

CUT TO:

EXT. 'ALL THE SYSTEM' SET, STUDIO ONE - AFTERNOON

We see EMERY and TED MILLER smoking cigarettes near a side-gate for staff parking, just off to the side of a prepared set, one designed to show a public official speaking outdoors to a crowd. TED spots an individual in a nice suit heading toward the smaller studio building.

TED:

Hey, see that guy? Over there, by the side exit?

EMERY:

Guy with the razor-burn or the bald fellow?

TED:

Bald. That's Don Cheaser, executive head of the company that's payin' for all your big crowd shots. We got three sponsors right now but Cheaser Co. is the heavy. Don's real hands-on, too. We got him for a few productions right now. The guy keeps us fed and he doesn't send other people, either. Comes down here himself. It's unnerving but he's real useful.

EMERY:

Oh?

TED:

Yeah, you just have to be careful of him. Watch your mouth, and all. Real religious.

EMERY:

I see. Well, I do know about his company. They've been around since I was a kid.

TED:

Sure. And Don rules the roost on this production. In fact, you should meet him. Come on, let's go talk to him, get you introduced.

EMERY:

Now?

TED:

Yeah, you want to? He's a good person to meet.

EMERY:

(nervous and surprised)

I- I guess it wouldn't hurt, sure. Uh, but what do I say? I'm just the writer.

TED:

You'll think of somethin'. Talk about the program or how you like his product. Just don't swear or say anything immoral. Come on.

The two men approach DON CHEASER.

TED:

(Walking up beside CHEASER)

Hey there Don, you got a second? This is Emery Asher; he's the writer of this production.

CHEASER:

(Rushed, stopping with an incincere smile):

Okay. Nice to meet you. Like the story. Keep it up.

EMERY:

(with humor)

Thank you, Mr. Cheeser. I'm very glad to meet you! And I'd like you to know that I eat your product every few nights with some decent beer.

CHEASER:

(frowns and raises eyebrow)

You don't say.

EMERY:

I do! My kids love it, too.

TED takes EMERY'S arm, stopping him with a grunt. CHEASER continues on, leaving them behind. He wears a look of disinterest.

TED:

(sighs with embarrassment)

Oh, Asher. Come on. Let's go.

TED and EMERY begin walking back toward the gates.

EMERY:

(calling over shoulder)

It was nice to meet you, Mr. Cheeser.

TED:

(with a shaking head)

For Christ's sake, Asher. You eat it with beer?

EMERY:

Did I say something wrong? Beer isn't immoral. Not yet.

TED:

Oh, for the love of- you got the wrong company, stupid. Cheaser Co. doesn't make Cheeser's Crackers. They make hair grease and petroleum jelly.

DISSOLVE TO:

The passage of time. Dim and rarely seen but in hindsight. The several years of free-lance had grown into a full-fledged occupation, and while the pay was rising and the contracts arrived in the mail, at times certified, and though rights were negotiated and productions completed or dropped, there was still the temerity of free-lance, the temporary and quick nature of it. Emery was treading heavy but had made some distance, though only so long as he kept his arms moving, only so much as he navigated the waves and breathed right. At any moment, he might run out of heat and start to sink; he might drop beneath the other swimmers. If this happened, the paddling and frantic energy needed to get back to this position, this surface, would be more than he could wage and would likely spell the end of things.

The scripts went out with regularity and his local bank teller actually recognized his name from a show. The money came in sudden, frivolous bursts, and then tapered into slow dribbles. The mail carrier made jokes about being promoted to script-handler and the constant inundation of Beth's ears with the workings of the television world began giving her a knowledge of its aptitudes and habits that could rival many workers in the industry. She began reading over his scripts with a director's eye, something she was not so apt with, but that he did find helpful, and involving her was necessary so that the two of them had the same understanding of his career. She braced him and he was thankful for it. Beth could have easily chosen to be exhausted with him, but had instead braced herself and dove into the pool. His daughters concocted small, parental adventures for him to undertake, and his wife absolved him from some of the more time-consuming tasks, for the time being. He considered himself a lucky man. He wrote and he wrote.

The third year of free-lance was functioning, and so short, and the girls were growing and he smoked and smoked and just needed to keep swimming, keep rowing the arms forward, paddling and breathing his temporary best until something big might happen. He tried to keep focus, to arouse his difficult regimen with clarity until some particular night when he might be called upon for a production of real capital, until his name was more than simply recognized by one or two people, but rather—

"Son of a bitch, it's me!" he shouted, still holding the telephone.

"What's wrong?" Beth asked, entering the living room quickly with a jar of mayonnaise in her hand. It was a Wednesday night near the beginning, middle, or end of Spring. It could have been any time, really.

He stood in the living room, holding the telephone and buzzing in the light of the television.

"That new award," he said, feeling a bit drunk, "I got a nomination."

"What for?" she asked. He only stared at her then, his eyes slim.

"Oh, come on; you know what I meant. Which story?" she rephrased.

"It's for _All the System_."

"Ha! Congratulations! You know I've always-"

"Just like that! No warning, no hints... just nothing!"

"Well, this is wonderful! I think it's your best one, too. You should call your mother and tell her the news. And William."

"Quick, turn on some music. Son of a bitch, I want to move around."

He stepped over and set the phone back in its cradle then, surrounded in spring and good news, his face contorted in a look that exhibited thankfulness, shock, doubt, and for the briefest of moments, abject self-love.

CUT TO:

INT. ASHER LIVING ROOM - NIGHT

EMERY is excitedly gesturing about and trying to get control of himself as BETH watches, amused.

FREEZE SCENE. We see all motion stop. EMERY is in mid-step, goofy look on his face, and Beth has halted while turning for the radio. The image currently frozen on their living-room television is one of four men in suits and varying ties peering out from behind the screen at EMERY with looks of puzzlement.

We see HOST ASHER enter into the living room in a trim, black suit, interrupting our frozen scene. This second Asher walks center, between EMERY and BETH, to address us. He is the only thing in the scene that moves or makes sound. HOST ASHER wears a smug look. He has a burning cigarette between the fingers of his right hand. He holds an Emmy in his left. We see him place the cigarette between his lips and then, with his right hand now free, he reaches into his pocket, extracting a quarter. We watch as he flips the quarter in the air and catches it. He takes a drag from his cigarette, opens his palm to see the coin-toss result, then he exhales and smiles. HOST EMERY looks back up at us and, removing the cigarette from his mouth, he composes himself and speaks.

HOST ASHER:

Son of a bitch.

### ACT II

### _______________

**Introduction to the Paperback**

All the System and Other Stories, by Emery Asher

Billo & Samuel, 1958

Thanks and Gratitude

At first, thanks must be given to both editor, J. Kemp, and his company, Billo & Samuel, both of which played a part of this project seeing any light. For the opportunity of collecting these four teleplays into the book format, I am a bit shored, and quite flattered. Being offered a book was unexpected, and a signpost or testament to the small bit of limelight a television writer can achieve these days. Never has it been better, and I certainly hope something good is to be found in the reproduction of these scripts into a book. This is my first, true foray into a mode that does not transmit on airwaves, but print is an old friend of mine, and I am pleased to reach you in such a way. My first doubts were as to whether these stories could entertain an audience without actors or visual properties, but I feel they do, and in the end committed to compiling them into a book and penning this short introduction. Billo & Samuel has been good enough to offer, and in being grateful, I feel a need to provide some background on some of the events and story behind these stories of events. I don't wish to give a manifesto, but I would like to explain a little about the nature of television, and what made the scripts in this book acceptable, or worthy of being compiled in print.

About the Stake of Television

There is no document that can, with adequacy or decree, describe the odd fortes and peculiar advent of a writer in the television game. Various shadows compel various writers, and the medium is far from understood as a whole by those who attempt to navigate its mountains. The early troubles that clotted the workings of scriptwriting for the home screen have not diminished, but are still ever prankishly in effect. This studio industry has workarounds and nice patches, but the inherent weaknesses and a lean toward the demographic approach are basic. These disadvantages are unresolvable, really, and there is no dodging the saturation of airwaves with wrestling and drama (much of it stilted). There is writing that, at times, seems as if its master was wrestling with his own material, and the commercials, of course, are a gaudy interruption when longer than they need to be, which is universally always. The scene of directors and producers, every sort of hand to gain proximity to the process, including a writer, is approaching the time of its adolescence, and as difficult to control as it has been, will worsen for a time still more. The television world is as if a case study in all things acceptably botched. You cannot justify or defend against these traits, but knowledge of how they came about is most certainly available. There is much to learn and still remaining are the winnows of technique and the destruction, or at least, dashing, of the cinema and Broadway mindsets from those conscripts drawn into the game.

As with radio, Hollywood, or the book world (into which I am now joining through a sincere and surprising back door), there is the plausibility that television will release enough of its own carbon dioxide that no animal attached to her habitat might escape before the inevitable suffocation. It may very well fire the pistol backward through its brain. There is still much to attempt and wage in this place, however, and as the cards are dealt, day in and day out, we know these are early days, and a heartening truth is that we are now giving our best, or at the least, giving our attempts at the best and hoping for espousal through our newly enervated critics.

Uncertain Events

The standard unit of measure for a radio or television writer's failure is one day. This general failure is made up of many smaller incidents that compound easily. They are collected and evaluated to the day, and they accrue their interest in his worth to the day. The writer re-evaluates and moves his failures about in the mind shortly after the Sun sets each evening. It is an incessant task. Failure lets up, however. The trying rejections are punctuated, and almost parenthetically, in successes. Cry foul or cry applesauce; you're on your way somehow. Acceptance is often as surprising as it is brief; a man does not always seek out those brief accolades he receives, but is awarded them. The days come and go, bringing with them and then taking away each rejection or promised payment. The days do little for the soul, however. The true metric of a writer, I believe, is in the momentary life. This is a rotation of grand or awful instances that roll round and round, not by days, or years, but by their own fortune. A critic blares your name with vehemence and vitriol from his article, or the sale of sales comes in. The newest scripts face rejections, or the mail brings a choppy burst of checks. The commute from a sale to production might fatigue one nearly to flight, or the Emmy is offered. These occur quickly and in scattered array, and a playwright for television has to enjoy or despise them just as quickly.

There is no more time to revel in a treasured hour than there is to grumble in a loathsome one. It is an hour, and the next is already en route. That the writer must surpass his acceptances in the same manner he gets over his failures is in no way indicative of how those things function: The acceptances get over you fast. The rejections cling and itch you like damp clothes, weigh you down and cause the bourbon to glimmer.

I do remember an incident, early in my career, late 1952, when I had to drive across New York with Arlie Waller, a director who was working on shooting one of my scripts. We were driving from a meeting at the Columbia Broadcasting System headquarters to a bar where many from the production were waiting for us. Many of the crew were having a bit of celebration over the finalization of the remaining set for _Isle of the Viceroy._ We had a bit of shooting to do still, but were very close to the end-zone. As the two of us drove across town, Arlie and I fell into a busy discussion on a script I had dreamed up but had yet to set into type. He was offering some changes to my story's premise and advising me about story elements. I was annoyed, trying to champion myself, being somewhat of a baby about his notions "affecting the fluidity of the theme" and "ogling my characters with unnecessary detail". I knew better, but for a few minutes, I had forgotten.

My mood was effecting my driving, and I had all the sorts of defensiveness a green writer might carry. At one dismal point in the conversation, and as it turned out, the final point, I voiced with spite: "You produce the shows and I write the stories. Stay in your office and I'll stay in mine," and as if the universe sought to place its own sort of period at the end of that silly harangue, the entire passenger side of my car scraped against a retaining wall and we stopped with force, the front end perched against a devastated lamp-post.

We exited the wrecked car and our argument was manifest. What had been a rambling over story had become an automobile accident in less time than a nostril requires to fully flare. I opened the trunk to check on my typewriter, which turned out to be fine. While the trunk was open, however, Arlie was able to view my subsistence, my commuter life, the shoddy heaps of underwear and neckties, snack food packages, and the iron with its cord tangled up in all of it like a constricting snake. This was all the debris of my traveling habit, and accoutrements to the grueling and constant, six-hundred and fifty mile commutes from Ohio to New York for work. The argument over story ended abruptly. Arlie stared into my trunk and then looked up at me.

"Brother, you gotta relocate," he told me.

After some talk with two policemen and a pull truck, we managed to get ourselves to the bar by taxi, where Arlie delighted in telling every detail of the accident, the argument, and especially doting on those portions of the story that involved the contents of my trunk. Worse than this embarrassing, ongoing recount of our accident, Martin Ward was there, someone I had badly wanted to meet, and a person who, to a beginning writer, was one of the men to know. Arlie went on and on about the underwear, the iron, the garbage wrappings, and my earnest worry over the state of my typewriter.

"So I'm seein' a pair of white briefs with a leaky quart of oil sittin' on 'em. Leaky! Who could wear those the way they're stained? Do you actually put those on, Asher?"

I was mortified, but no longer defensive. I had lost that adrenaline on the way over. Ward, a man to meet, approached me near the counter after several beers and put his arm around me, seeing my ongoing distress at the day's events and the exposing of my lousy travel life. My nerves were a mess, from the argument, the wreck, and now the embarrassment of literally having my 'dirty laundry' exposed. Ward could see I was beginning into a state of half-drunk panic.

"Look," he said, "nobody cares how you drive or what you got in your trunk. Calm down. All they care about is your work and how it affects _their_ work. Outside of that, this is just a bunch of guys at a bar, and you're one of 'em. Relax. We have a great script and you wrote it." He gave me a slap on the back then and ordered another beer. We had a few and then I hailed a taxi to the train station and bought a ticket back to Ohio for the weekend. It was an eye-opening experience and effected me in ways not at first discernible. It may seem silly or novice now, but that accident and the brief talk with Martin Ward was truly the first time I felt to be an actual part of the television world, and in any way connected to others in the game. Until that day, I had felt merely to be an interloper, a sort of industry tourist or an unattractive suitor, one that managed to find a bit of luck here and there, but would not be around for long.

On the path to enterprise, and especially in the television business, a writer meets many accomplices. Through these, he is given occasional memberships to sources of work that exist all over town. You cherish these and use them when needed. Who you know does not make you a good writer, but simply more visible. This is a necessity; a good writer that knows no one is a ghost before death. When your mind is a bit cracked and your days bent from exhaustion or the incessant rummaging in yourself for meaning, these people have a treasury of advice and can direct you toward work. They usually bring it out when you're in trouble, which is the exact right moment to do so. A slap on the back and a simple statement are often all a writer needs to continue against the wind. Uncertainty and struggle are tough on everyone in the television industry, but due to his nature, and emotional aptitude, the stuff of creativity, a writer is all the more susceptible to his bridge groaning beneath those weights. People like Martin Ward, and even Arlie Waller, came along enough that I was propelled forward. Were I to write a short script of my life, these accomplices would have a scene of their own, and if my life went over budget, I wouldn't shorten that scene or give them less lines, not for anything.

Of course, we all have the withery weeks. What summer ushers onto the limbs is dry and weak by autumn. A writer goes through his own private seasons, and there is little warning of when these times will be upon him. Sometimes they wake and hunt him to the month. The writer goes nowhere and looks around and comes back. Then he goes somewhere. Failure is a bit like reconnaissance.

There was a half of a year, shortly after that incident with Arlie and Martin Ward, where a time of rejection sought to comb my hair from my head. I had a drought of money and I was unable to sell anything. Meals suffered, mood dwindled, and my family was given to finding me always in a sort of false cheer that they could see through with ease. A blank page was no longer my comrade in occupation, but had taken on the grim hue of an adversary. I wrote unremittingly, but no one was buying. The uncertainty was overwhelming. The mail would come and I would lean against the kitchen counter in a sort of unfocused surrender while opening the rejections and cancellations. It was a rough six months, and I began to doubt whether I was still viable as a scriptwriter.

One afternoon, I was surprised to discover a letter from Ted Miller. He was a choice producer, a sort of walking trophy for the art of the anthology show, and he still is. I had sent him a script and, for a long duration, had received no response. Finally, Miller's response came in the mail, and I was certain it would be a rejection. Miller, however, did not reject my script. He wanted not only what I had sent him, but _more_ scripts from me in the near future. He asked that I fly to New York and have a meeting with him, and I did so, a volume of manuscripts on the verge of bursting from my cheap briefcase. They were all I brought, not even a change of clothes. Just months prior, Beth and I had been sitting in the white radiance of our television watching _The Bluejackets_ , and I had remarked how much I would like to work with a producer of that capability, with that sort of large budget, how wondrous it would be to work with someone like Ted Miller.

There I was, at bat with everything I could muster, nervously inhabiting my body in his office. We had two meetings, the first of which had me feeling like a good actor that had been written terrible, phony lines. I found myself sounding like the pitchmen I had disliked so much in my radio days. The second meeting was genuine, and I felt more like myself. Ted informed me he would be buying six of my scripts, and quite possibly more. A show was being designed and had already garnered a strong sponsor, and the series would require many scripts to keep it afloat. This was to be Ted's show, his baby, from the ground up. He was designing a regular, ongoing gig for himself, and there would be room for others, and he was impressed with my work.

An hour later, I had tipped the bellman at my hotel with extravagance and was letting a baroque bourbon turn my skull into a lantern. I rambled to my wife across the telephone lines in all of my exuberance, and she became just as excited as I. After sobering, that same night, I wrote my way into another script. The shakiness in my knees the previous day was now steady as a concrete foundation. The mathematics in my head, even as they rumbled over the bourbon, were clear: Seven hundred dollars a story, for six scripts, and these were works already written. "And probably more, Asher. Maybe a dozen," he had said. It felt like free money. A slot machine's grin. It was as if I had somehow run over every base on a bunt and managed an illogical home run. I felt as if I had won the sweepstakes.

Six weeks later, while sitting in a chair at my home, I received the next letter from Miller. The show had been cancelled. My home run was rescinded. The game had been called because of snow. I had been lifted to the top of a certain mountain and then, while admiring the magnanimous view and my good fortune, had been carried by the wind right off the peak so it could watch me tumble all the way down again. And fast. I did get to work with Ted eventually, but not for the six script gambit that had invigorated us so.

Perhaps it should be said that the tantamount and viable things one can learn about writing for television are those that keep one going. The occasional foray into a series, even short, is a significant boon. An acceptance letter can motivate at just the right time. The meetings that go well but end up facing that not-so-peculiar and tragic destiny of going nowhere are a blessing, as well, as they help to train you for future meetings. You try, is all. You carry your manuscripts and offer them to whoever passes. This is exhausting but never boring and it brings your rare achievements into focus. I have learned much from the good over the past few years, but have I learned the most from the troublesome patches. The slow burn has taught me more than any firecracker could.

The Trouble with the Pecking Order

In the realm of television, I am a hack by general standard, as are all of the industry's writers, good or bad. Go ahead and let it kink its sound from the hind teeth: Hack. In the classes that comprise television's hierarchy, the writer is most often thought a resident of Grub Street. An underling rather than accomplice, and a janitor of words into whose mouth they'd be happy to cram a bar bit if they could. The works that leave the typewriter and the scripts that reach production are but the broth for which networks need to settle their meats, the canvas onto which a sales message can be placed, the means to commercials and the vehicle to a product's representation in both airtime and sponsorship.

This is a medium I have taken much part in, from the start, and it is a medium still thought by many of those in its higher echelon as being foremost a delivery system and not, by traditional means, a form of art. In that mode of thinking, the television writer will never be observed a place in the consideration of art, but will be viewed in the commercial sense. I can think of no more a saddening and dangerous manner with which to consider a writer than by the laws of money. For now, in television, this is his rank. He may climb higher in time, but today, his work is the black soil in which an ad-man buries each thirty-second seed. There is room to move and create still. Despite the ad-man, notwithstanding the compromise, and though the networks divide the acreage and are stingy with the size of spade, it is still great and prolific soil.

Four Shows

On March 20th, 1955, the _Carlton Cast Theatre_ aired the first of the shows based on the scripts in this book, _All the System_. It was simply another of my scripts, somewhere around my 80th, yet only the 9th to be put into production. I missed the first half of broadcast because I'd forgotten it was being aired that night. My wife and I sat down on the couch and, looking for something to watch, discovered the program mid-way through the second act. We watched the rest of the performance from the living room while I made brief trips into the kitchen to fetch beer and clove tea. My wife was suffering from an unyielding toothache, and so I was keeping eye on her as she sat and sweat in her chair, inundating myself with beer and giving her cups of the slightly anesthetic tea, one after the next. Not five minutes had passed beyond the end of the show when our phone rang. It has not ceased ringing since that moment.

I had attempted the uphill course to success, and had not done well. I was still down below, and though I did not want to wage my campaigns in the trench manner, there I was. Then it happened: The Emmy and a critical start. It is to fortune alone I must infer any success I have had with these shows. People refer to this manner of achievement as the 'overnight success', and I am that in many ways. A piece of writing did this, not the bulk of my work, but a single piece. _All the System_ caught the interest of so many, their imaginations turning on it in a way I could have neither anticipated nor tried to engineer. The favor that script culled into being was not only from the viewers, but the critics. After _All the System_ aired, I accrued a dozen offers for television assignments, all of them with little compromise. After the Emmy, another dozen came through the telephone wire, straight into my living room. Screenplays were asked for Hollywood pictures, three of them. There were two offers for possible novels and one for a collection, of which this introduction is in direct relation. In addition to these, I was invited to lunch with a couple of producers from Broadway and there were six interviews placed before me from a variety of publications. Everything that had been rejected prior to _All the System_ began being picked up straightaway and purchased. I had been given a sudden and unexpected crown. A little one, but a crown.

While I was pleased at this attention, the constant comparison of each new show to _All the System_ worried me, and, after time, began to deplete me. I wanted to assure people there were other shows, that I had written and was capable of far more than that one piece, but always a new work was compared to that first success. For me, what at first seemed a shower of kind words had slowly become a nail in the ego. I was not thankless by any means (quite the opposite), but I didn't want to write more stories like _All the System_. I wanted to write many things, and I have and will continue to do so, but it was difficult trying to convince people that I had more in me than that first, hit program.

I continued assuring. _I'll Be Sure to Thank Them_ was a stronger work than any I had written previous, but the critics paled it beside _All the System._ I thought there was true, earthen salt in the characters of _Coronach_ , but reviewers found the characters not as likeable as those in _All the System._ The accessibility of _The Gardener's Midnight_ came through in a sure and careful way (I spent more time with it than I had with previous scripts), and the story had a lot of style, but the only people that thought this, it turned out, were myself and my wife. I began to be referred to as " _All the System_ writer, Emery Asher".

There was a brief reprieve in this moniker when _Naught for Heaven_ was performed with the _Nash Television Theatre_. The grandiloquent reviews for this particular piece added the title of that work to my reference, and in the present, I often hear at the outset of a public interview: "Please welcome the writer of _All the System_ and _Naught for Heaven_ , Emery Asher." One need only refer to the title of the book being read at this very moment to see the extent of this: _All the System and Other Works by Emery Asher._ While I am no longer expected to repeat that script, its stylizations and particular sort of story, and though I have managed to make much ground with other works, I do have to accept that I might never escape the initial success of that script. It is perhaps a silly and vain complaint. I am thankful for it, of course, but must remain cautious.

Afterthoughts

Always there will be the intrusion of commercials. It is the blind spot in every mirror, being that even when you are unaware of them, they exist and have come to make grand promises and ask their small favors. A writer in television, though he may be given commercial confidence and privilege, works around the advertisers as if a museum tour guide, swaying a hand past all the luxuriant displays for each group of passers-by. Not all commercials are bad, but I dislike them. The phrase is 'necessary evil', and that iniquity is what pays for much of the production. I see them as a sort of outlandish uncle that likes to run his mouth, one that you simply have to put up with and, to certain extent, make happy, because he owns your house and fixes the plumbing when the drips occur. Yes, he spouts slogans and clichés, gives his elbow jars to your ribs, and passes gas loudly at the dinner table. Yes, he has his outbursts and winks, and is in the habit of talking down to you as if you were a child that couldn't possibly understand anything beyond a jingle in his favor. Yes, he inconveniences you, and you wish he were a different sort of person, but he is still your uncle and you are still reliant on him. He is the lord of your particular slum, and he is family. Each of you needs the other, no matter how many frowns and arguments are involved.

This book contains no commercials, though it also comes without their money, which means no actors, score, or set, which is the isolated nature of print. I have taken the reign in these areas by way of introduction. I'm the director in this particular endeavor, as well as the host, and even the mic-handler. What I hope you will enjoy are four of my works, chosen with the aid of J. S. Kemp, a gracious editor and one who's opinion could sway anyone onto his side in most matters. In addition to _All the System_ , you'll find _The Gardener's Midnight, Naught for Heaven,_ and _Coronach_. All four of these plays have been set into a readable type and they contain a few production notes on their original airings. It is my earnest hope you find in these something you can take away with you, and I am grateful for your attention and interest. It has made me what I am.

Emery Asher, 1958

### _______________

**Chapter Eleven**

"What a dull shit I am. It was... just a real jackass thing to do. Really amateur," Emery said, sitting in the chair in his living room at just past midnight, holding his youngest daughter against his chest, where she had fallen asleep. He did not want to jostle her. His free hand kept the telephone at his ear and he had leaned back with a posture he would not be able to maintain for much longer. At nearly three-years-old, Vivian was getting too big to hold for durations longer than a few minutes. His older brother was on the line, and they were having the Long Talk, something they found useful and engaged in nearly to the month, even if the conversations at times became contentious, or maudlin.

"How do you mean?"

"Oh, I rattled on and on in this overly dramatic introduction," Emery confided, "Just made a heel of myself. Really. And it's way too long. You'll see when you read it. There are more words in my introduction than there are in any two of the scripts. You open the book and there's me on page one, yammering on like I was the Emperor of Art."

"An Emperor of Art."

"The Don of Writers. I could shoot myself. Peter Wills liked the collection but he panned it due to the introduction. He thought it was arrogant and embarrassingly self-involved. It was, too."

"Peter Wills is a prick, Em."

"Sure, but sometimes his pulpit is Time Magazine and Time counts big."

"Overrated, I think. So you talked about you. What of it? It was your book, after all."

"Introductions are supposed to be about the work and the author, I know, but there was just too much... _me_ in all that writing I wrote about me. I made it sound like I've been championing television for decades, not the four years I've actually been doing this. And worse, I made it sound like there weren't any other writers around. I know a lot of writers and I'm certain I must have pissed off a few. Everything but the kitchen sink went in there. I may as well have called myself a saint."

"Well, you always did like being overly dramatic."

"Wills is right, it _was_ arrogant. And shameful. I wish I'd taken a look at a few other introductions before I wrote that. Maybe learned a touch of the humble way."

"Maybe you got carried away. That's not so bad, really. A book's introduction is supposed to be about the history of the work anyway. It sounds like you included all that just fine."

"Too much. I wish there were a way to unpublish a book."

"Now, you don't mean that. I'm sure it isn't that bad. So you didn't like your introduction. Big deal. Maybe somebody else will."

"No, it's a flop. Some reviewers weighed in on the galleys sent out, and they didn't like it. Teleplays don't work in book format. And nobody's gonna buy it. Billo & Samuel are already talking about dragging the price down to a humiliating minimum and it hasn't even hit the shelves yet. Toilet paper will be worth more."

Perhaps the critical nature with which the book had been reviewed was the culprit behind his embarrassment. The panning by reviewers, the weird rapture with which fans held him and that was decidedly undeserved... Writers could tell how good they were by the quality of their fans, and Emery's, scattered as they were, demonstrated a character nearly deaf to reason. The book would be a humbling washout, his pig-headedness separated into two hundred pages plus four, and affixed within a cover by an incessant need for attention.

Getting carried away with something. That was apt in phrase; Emery often grasped his own works and name and attempted to elevate them up the boughs, though for none of these levels did he feel a particular kinship. This was carrying something in the basest sense. He carried his work to New York in exhausting drives. He carried his name in a mouth that was beginning to talk too much. He did not belong in New York, writing for her producers and directors, making space for the announcements of her products. Yet there he was, often for a week at a time. He did not belong away from New York. He no longer wore the Li'l Abner shoes, but the simpler life in his home was too far removed from his activity. He spent hours affixed to the telephone, days and nights over a typewriter, taking short breaks with the telephone hot against his ear. He was being carried away, and often, by his own sense of drive.

"In the defense of toilet paper, I would admit that it is quite useful. They should print books on it, really," William said.

"Maybe so."

"Don't be so hard on yourself. You just want to be liked," William said, "and you have been; you're just not getting much of it _right now_."

"I'm that childish?"

"I know you, little brother. In a few days, you'll be on to the next thing and this will be the past. You're Toad of Toad Hall."

"I'm not so needy as all that."

"Are."

"I just want to keep moving, but I suppose you're right. I hear it from Beth, too. I suck all the air out of a room."

"You see? Listen to your wife. You have to play it cool, now. Slick, like the kids."

"Easy for you to say. You inherited father's patience, but I ended up with our mother's lust for involvement. I have her social-function soul but only the one party."

"There's a million parties. They're all boring."

"Well, you can sit for a week straight and not speak. That's like black magic to me."

"Patience is a virtue. So outside of the book and programs, how's the family, little brother?"

At first with understanding, Beth had now begun leaving him be even when he did not wish to be left alone. She was thoughtful and loved him much, but that care had begun to scald him. He found himself hoping she might interrupt him, here and there. His daughters were full of love and need for his attention, his play and frivolity, but he gave this less and less. The work was arrogating not only his schedule, but much of his mind. How long until they did as their mother? How long until his little girls found him unapproachable? Perhaps most troubling, women in New York noticed him and made their availability known. They did not care that he was married, and many of the men he met cheated often. They saw no wrong in it, considered the behavior a simple imperative of nature. Emery was at odds with this thinking, but knew that cheating would be so easy if he were to entertain it, especially with Beth being distant both in proximity and mood.

"Fine," Emery said, possibly lying, "We're all doing swell. The money coming in has helped tremendously and we're keen for fun. I think... maybe I'm working too hard, though. I need to make more time for my girls."

He had no sensation of talent, but the tough and stringy matter of skill. He had never thought himself in a state of being gifted, but had a tenacious grip on the things that concerned him. He felt he operated on hard work, not raw talent, and that his collar was assuredly blue. That these things, his skill and grip, could alter themselves to the very hour was unnerving. The success of two teleplays had dwarfed all of his others, and worse, there were new teleplays coming from his typewriter by the week, all of which he thought better than that old work for which he was known. Emery had made light of this in his introduction, blathered about this being the nature of writing. What did he know about the nature of writing? He had been a shill turned on his head and called a prince for a short while, a dull mule that some had mistaken for a thoroughbred.

"Always make time for those girls, Em. They're the best thing, you know. I don't want sad nieces, so keep 'em jumping. And Beth should smile somewhere around fourteen or fifteen times an hour. Aim for that."

"Oh, I try as much as I can. It's not that easy, however. You know how work is."

The letter felt to have its own temperature, heated in his breast pocket, knowing him there. His confusion and urge to keep the letter private for a time worsened when the hours began to drag. Most of a day had gone, and he still had not told his wife about the letter. He had thought to, and with immediacy, but then he didn't have quite the correct smile for it. Empty. The letter had been opened and read and then simply slipped into his pocket without so much as a grunt. Words on paper. They were unceasing. He did not want them to have much importance or power over him, but the letter felt to weigh as much as the daughter he held.

Vivian invoked in her sleep a series of light mumbles and then stilled as her father held her. He was entertaining a dream or else had fallen to reactions over some hidden process. Emery tilted back, readjusting in the uncomfortable chair. She was getting too heavy. His proper place at this time of night was beside Beth in bed, with this little one between them, for another year or so. Rebecca, the older daughter, had been in her own room for two years now, and adjusting to her absence at night had been difficult for Beth. Worse was that Emery did not often accompany her to bed, having a work-deranged schedule and troubles with falling asleep. He used this unfortunate time of unwanted wakefulness to watch television, a thing he did in study, not leisure. The pleasures of television had been robbed from him several years now. The flicker of the set was as the clamor of a bell indicating it was time to return to class. He wrote at night, studied at night, and at times, these late nights were conversations with his brother. These were all useful activities, but his proper and often unobtainable place was beside Beth, and that he knew this and did not go to bed brought him certain guilt.

William mentioned he had taken to hunting in recent months, and had managed to kill a stag in the process. Along with the stag, the meat from which he professed to like much, he had also expended an unwieldy amount of time in the woods. William could be quite solitary. He did not mind being alone for long durations, and could wait out an animal without problem, but this became somewhat of a curse, as he might wait far too long in a quarry-less place, and had on many occasions. As William spoke, Emery leaned his head down to the little girl and quietly smelled her hair. A purity. A creaturely scent that rode warmth and quiet. How could a smell be thick and thin, heavy and light, all at the same instant? He kissed her head and closed his eyes.

"...possibly a truck, to haul my catch back myself," William continued, "I haven't decided yet, but Helen has been hinting in an obvious way that she wants a coupe. I just don't see the point in that. Not a useful automobile, if you ask me."

"Hmm."

"Say, how's that Molden Roadster holding up?" Emery opened his eyes and caught his breath. He had begun to drift for a moment. Lieutenant Merrill had entered the room and taken residence on the couch, watching television after eyeing Emery and Vivian in the chair with a touch of admiration.

"Steady as the pyramids," Emery said then, returning quick to thought, which was a busy affair to him, at any hour.

"Ah. Good."

"I have to say, that's a car," Emery went on, revived into subject again, "A real, honest-to-God, solid automobile. Only big thing I've bought. And more than worth it."

"You'll have to let me drive her this summer at the lake."

"Sure, I'll supply the Roadster if you do all the driving."

"I'll do most of it, how about that?" William offered.

"It's a deal."

His daughter's small lips parted then and she grunted, twisted a bit. His fondness for her escalated for several seconds and then relaxed into the usual domesticity he had found in fatherhood. That was child-rearing at its clearest: Strands of common behavior that brought a child nurture, punctuated in short yet unmistakable moments of either trouble or infrangible bliss. Merrill yawned, stood, and exited to the bedroom to sleep beside Beth, his medals clinking as he tiredly walked.

The clinking sound changed, however. Emery was drifting again. He listened to the sound as it entered his house. The tinkling came in off the street, entered his ears, or rather, called his attention up from his world as the sound often did. Those damned chimes. The Cully family had recently purchased a wind chime in Brazil, a noisemaker that was fond of perpetuity. What had seemed a quaint and nearly tranquil emanation of middling chimes and the comfort of in-key tones had become an aggravating, never-ending collision of broken metal bones. The wind in Cincinnati was never just a visitor, and that chime up the street never shut up. This harping of sound over the neighborhood bothered him most when trying to sleep and during those rounds of writing when he was barely to the page, looming over a more furtive work and trying to snap an idea, any idea, into being. They were louder in the bedroom, of course.

"Em, you there?"

"Yes, sorry. I drifted off for a second. I'm holding Vivian and she's very warm. Makes me nod a little."

How nice Cayuga would be. Taughannock and walnut trees, the soothing lake and its place in his past... this would help to calm his present. The annual vacation would channel him away from producers and clattering keys and obnoxious chimes and ringing telephones, away from the drudging commutes and his fervor for the mail. The lake cabin was a sort of domesticity away from the domestic, and striking for its sheer, solacing qualities. Every person had one, a favorite place in the world, and Cayuga Lake had become his own. There was a high likelihood that Cayuga had been his favorite place for many years. The family met there and relaxed or adventured. In either manner, they were a family economized pleasantly and sustained for a time while away from their busy lives. The girls were inches taller with every visit, yet so young, so open to see what was around them. Rebecca was nearing five, the age at which Emery, himself, could recall his first memory of Cayuga Lake: There had been a bee sting, short and abrupt, like the memory it would form and that he would horde in his mind as if a small, burnished sapphire. A memory of a good place always needed to be kept in one's mind like an exhibit, and returning to that place was the only way to dust off the mental showcase for future viewing.

"You should get some sleep. I'll hang up," William offered.

"Soon, sure. Speaking of kids, though, when are you going to procreate, big brother? You need to have kids so they can swim in the lake with my girls," Emery said then.

"We'll get to it. We're waiting a while."

"If you wait too long, you'll forget what it was like to be a kid, and then you won't be able to identify with your own."

"Keep off me, Freud. When Helen and I are ready, your girls will have a cousin or two."

"Kids center you."

"Says you. Hey, Beth mentioned to Helen that you two bought a boat for the lake?"

"For whatever body of water we please, but probably mostly Cayuga. Yes, and you can drive that, too. Beer on the lake. No better place on this green Earth. We've gone every year for the past four. You should, too."

"We did; we came last year."

"And it was fun. You should do it every year with us. We should make it a big family thing; each year we all meet there. Use the cabin."

"Well, now that you've got a boat, we might just do that."

"We'll get loaded on the water, just the two of us."

"What for? Helen is hilarious when she's pickled. I say we all go out and drink to the point we can't see the water. Say, I thought you said the only big thing you've bought was that Roadster. A boat would qualify as another big thing, wouldn't it?"

"No, it's a pretty small boat, and I bought it used. It was cheap."

"Do we have to row it ourselves?"

"Well, not quite _that_ cheap."

The answer was to write more. That was what an Emery did when he felt washed under. Write more. The next thing. Keep moving. He was that certain breed of gambler who moved from machine to machine until he found a fiery one, claimed his much deserved payout, and then quickly shuffled off toward the next row. Toad in Toad Hall was right to lose his interest in past articles for the favor of some next shiny activity. This kept him from descending into a life of prolonged backsliding, and instead peppered his days in lesser failures, small troubles that could be swept aside as fast as he had found them, bankrupt moments that could be overcome with but the exercise of excitement and trial. Productive and slick could function as one. Energetic _and_ patient. These could co-exist in one thing, couldn't they? If he kept moving? Emery thought of a land mine. Patient. Until triggered. Then explosive. Perhaps he could be like that.

After another refusal on Emery's part to go to sleep, the two brothers discussed their respective fields, the differences in their forms of writing, the money, how far the discus was thrown that represented their debt and general station. Rain in D.C., wind in Ohio. A general agreement was made on the troubles with New York. Then the brothers discussed their wives, Helen and Beth, the differences, backgrounds, and especially the mannerisms. The slight difficulties of varied perceptions, especially involving time and money, never seemed to outweigh the happiness of being loyally married.

William mentioned his gout and the increase in trouble it had been causing him.

"I had to see a doctor, too," Emery said, "Pretty recent. We're gaining years of age like a windshield gains spatters of bug."

"That's dumb. We're saplings still. What was wrong?"

"The fingers in my right hand kept going numb."

"Are you typing that much? That's crazy."

"No, the doctor says it's from smoking too much."

"And it makes your fingers numb? I've never heard of that. How much are you smoking?"

"Four a day."

"Em, that's less than _I_ smoke. Your doctor's a buffoon. I smoke with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A few between, and a few throughout the night. Of course, there's the _special occasion_ smoke, too. Yeah, and one before bed, usually. It's nice. Oh, and driving. Helen and I love to smoke while driving."

"Packs. Four packs a day."

"...are you joking?"

"No. That's how many I go through. Not every day, but most. It's stressful here, Will. More than anything I could describe about television writing... it's stressful. I don't stop moving ever. I'm getting antsy just sitting here with the phone to my ear. After this conversation, I'm going to red-line through a script I wrote mostly yesterday. A couple of more hours in me before I can go to bed. I don't actually smoke them all. Most go up in waste sitting in the ashtray because I forget about them when I'm writing and they just burn away."

"Cut back on the cigarettes, little brother. I'm serious. Cut back a lot."

"That's what DeGan said. And I am."

"Who's DeGan? Your doctor?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he's right. You're on your way to an iron lung."

"It's bizarre even thinking about iron lungs. Can you imagine?"

Smoking. Everywhere. Everyone. Commercials for Castleberry Cigarettes wedged into the last slot of airtime on a show, so that when the credits came, you wanted to smoke, to pleasure yourself with nicotine, thus cementing the show in your mind as favorable and of good feel. Timing. Addiction was somewhat like a television program. Slots and acts and a very cognizant system of time. Every smoker had his own rate. Every commercial for cigarettes had a certain timing as well. Emery's addiction had built over the years, more and more. Cigarettes had seized his anger mechanisms. He could no longer relax or keep calm without smoking. This was a control switch. When Chet Wilkes threatened to close a production, it was time to smoke. After the cigarette, Emery was bright of mind and ready to approach. To talk it out. To use diplomacy instead of insult. Smoking had become a portion of his work ethic and regimen, and it functioned incredibly well in this. He needed his mind sturdy, and he needed the sense of pacing nicotine offered more than ever.

The subjects came and went between the two brothers. Late night was easy with this form of talk, two people away from the world, and without the stress of proximity, distant from each other but for dialogue and nattering through long, lonely wires. This was deep talk of a sort, light where it traveled, but penetrating when it dove. Invariably the conversation would shimmy into that particular muse for which they had both been bitten.

"I had a scene where some dusters are getting ready to ford a river," Emery explained, "right in the middle of the second act. And a lot's been leading up to it. But so Dick Lees, one of the producers of the show, he comes up and tells me I have to change the dialogue so the characters say they're 'crossing' the river, not 'fording' it. Can you guess why?"

"Uh-uh. Didn't sound right?"

"No, it's because the show is sponsored by Chevrolet, and Dick didn't think they'd be comfortable with the word 'ford'."

"Huh! Are sponsors that uptight?"

"Some. As are a good portion of the producers I know."

"That's ridiculous."

"It is."

"Seems we're both working in politics, after all. Just a different sort. I wish I could say it was any different in journalism. It's only marginally better."

"I'm sure."

"I've had to do a little rewriting here and there for certain interests. Everything out here is written with a squinty eye on someone, and a pleased eye on someone else. It's like moving opinions around to make new ones. Gets you feeling like a hack, at times."

"We _are_ hacks. I said so in that introduction. It's the same for me, too. With getting stories cut to bits so no one gets troubled. Watering things down to fit every sort of person who might be watching. I don't know that it just makes one _feel_ like a hack, but that it slowly transforms you into one."

"Hey, I'm really not one of those."

"Me neither. But we aren't the ones who decide that. They are."

"Huh. Odd point. You might have some truth in there somewhere."

CUT TO:

Old newsprint. Blank, no words, just faded, textured paper, yellowed with age and filling the frame.

V.O. (SWIFT-SPEAKING MAN)

Announcement! The innovative Roadster 5, the newest and best in an American line of respected automobiles. Molden has pulled the stops, and engineered an automobile with every comfort and feature you want, right down to the Duolux, triple-thread tires. Molden's new Roadster is the only American car with an aggregated engine system. The Roadster 5's four-wheel independent suspension is an innovation the world is watching, and is the first of its modern kind. You'll feel the difference your first minute on the road. And remember, only a Molden comes equipped with our patented air-cooled alloy engine, for the safest and smoothest ride possible while still on the ground. New Maxolite paint never fades, giving you a vehicle you'll be proud to show off. And with up to 30% more miles to the gallon and Molden's easy, six-day part-replacement guarantee, there's never a need to store your car for too long in the garage. You can afford to keep your new Roadster where it belongs... on the road.

CUT TO:

A fussing baby. So tired and only willing to sleep in the frivolous sense. Never going very deep when out, like her father. She turned her head and waved an arm in a mild flail before falling back to sleep. She had a scent not unlike her mother's, but entirely unlike Rebecca's. Emery was immune to his own scent, whatever it was. The little girl lifted her chin and then settled, out again. He yawned, tilted his neck until the gratifying crackle rushed toward the base of his skull.

"Okay," William said, "I have to ask: Why is it you only call me late at night, Em?"

"Because I know you're awake."

"Yeah, the family curse. But I'm awake during the day, too. You should call me in the afternoon sometime. I'm funnier. Besides, this only keeps me awake longer."

"You wouldn't answer if you didn't want to talk. It's useful. Besides, we work all day."

"That's true, but try me on a weekend or something."

"Neh, night is the only time I have when I can sit down and talk to somebody for more than a minute. You can ask me to call during the day, but I'll defy you openly."

"Because you're a big shot."

"Psh. Yeah, me. Hey, speaking of big shots, though, I might be on to something a lot bigger than the usual shows, at least."

"Oh?"

"I have a new agent now. Dave Allen. He's one of the Warren Agency guys. These agents out in Los Angeles are sharks and they operate out of Hollywood, which does things differently than New York. They're taking on television personnel right now. Like you wouldn't believe. It seems the money is finally stacking up. Oh, Dave's agency has some real heavyweights, too. Neil Simon. Sydney Lumet. That Buddy Holly fellow. I think Hitchcock is one of theirs. Writers and musicians and athletes and everybody. I even heard they have Marciano. Big stuff. They'll probably have politicians, soon enough."

"Didn't Marciano hang it up last year?"

"Yes. Deservedly. But I'm sure he still needs an agent. Anyway, they signed me on, and right now they've got a few of my pieces floating around some new pools and something good is on the line. You already know about the three pictures I signed on to write for Pacific, but better than that, do you remember that suspense series I was trying to pitch when I was doing radio?"

"Suspense. Was it the thing with the cruise and everybody disappears?"

"Oh, no. That was just a two-parter. This was a series that would have a different story each episode. Not a serial, but an anthology."

"Wait, yeah. I remember. _Inside the Mind_?"

" _The Other Side of the Mind_."

"Right, okay."

"And I'm just calling it _The Other Side_ now. Thing is, I converted it for television a ways back and I've been fishing it just about everywhere. No luck at all. I was just about ready to pack it away when my agent forwarded me a letter from CBS. You know CBS."

"Sure."

"Okay. So, I got that letter last week. They want me to come down to the studio next month and pitch it to a big producer over there in Los Angeles. They seemed to like the idea much. Want to hear more about it. Loved the two sample scripts they had. I sent three more and they still want me to come out, so things are looking good for a show, so far."

"That's good news, but... you'll be writing suspense, huh? That's a little pulpy, isn't it? I mean, considering your Emmy and all," William said.

"Sure, in a manner. I want it to be poignant, but yes, also suspenseful. Not pulpy, just based in speculation. But I want the whole thing: Science fiction, horror, war stories, crime drama, comedy, fantasy... just all of it. And if I do that, in those means, I can say a lot about people that I normally can't get away with. They'd be stories that chew over the human condition, but they'd be conveyed in speculation."

"What about romance?"

"Not so much of that, no."

"Oh hell, you're gonna put lessons into everything. I know you. You couldn't get enough of Aesop's Fables when you were little, and you want to make more of them now."

"Well, not fables. Morality tales, disguised."

"Who's morality?"

"The common one. I'd use fantasy and horror, mostly. People aren't so nervous about that, and the sponsors would give me a longer leash because any controversy would be hidden. I'd get to hire my _own_ writers, for a change."

"You wouldn't write it yourself?"

"I would at first. And always some of it. Maybe most of it. But I don't think I could handle an entire anthology on my own. That's weekly, brother. It would still be my show, though. Paydirt, too. Exceedingly nice paydirt. I'd have a joint production agreement, so I'd be a producer, as well as a writer. I have to figure out what to call my production company. Well, if any of this takes off, I mean."

"Crazy. Money is always nice, though. Women, too. And power. Can't forget about power."

"I'd love to have more money. Women, no. I have all I need regarding those; two daughters and a wife are all the women I'll ever need. But power... that's pretty apt because if I get to produce, it means I'd have creative control and I could run things my way. And being an hour-long program, I'd have room to write and I wouldn't have to stifle things so much. This show could really be a product straight from the imagination."

"Sounds like it is, already."

"Nice jab, but I could actually run wild if this deal happens. That would more than make up for the drudgery of having to write a weekly show, which I feel I'm a little past, at this point. That kind of freedom and money, though... how could a Binghamton kid pass that up?"

"If my studies were correct," the older brother interjected, "they threw Aesop off a cliff."

"That's just a myth. I think Aesop is a myth, too. I'm not especially planning on writing animal allegories, and I certainly don't live near any cliffs."

"Those skyscrapers in New York are pretty tall, Em."

"Say, that's good, but if the show is chosen, I'd be in Los Angeles, Will. We'd have to move. To Hollywood."

"I have no parry to that. Enjoy the desert."

"Yeah, wish me luck."

"Luck. To be serious, though, I'm proud of you, little brother. I really am. You seem to be making it all work, and even if this show doesn't happen, I know you'll have other things on the line soon enough. Dad would be proud of that, too."

"Thanks, Will. The truth is that I'm swinging wild, though. I have to keep trying to land these bigger fish or we'll starve."

"Ah: 'Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.' Remember how that one turned out? Just don't let a big fish drag you all over the damn sea, Em."

"I see your point. Listen, I think I should probably get off the phone and make for that script. I'm tired of you."

"Good. Leave me alone," William said.

"I'm going to end this boring call."

"I inferred that already. And I ended my half of this call about ten minutes back."

"All right, another time, big brother."

"Sounds good. Oh hey, Em. Before I forget, call mother sometime. She tells me you don't call much and I know she wants to hear from you."

"All right, I'll do that. Goodnight."

"Yeah, goodnight."

He was upset with himself for not having told Beth. Not so upset with keeping the day's news from William, and he hadn't even thought about giving his mother the news. He supposed he had come into a sort of grand and lustrous achievement, concerning the notice he had received in the mail that day, the potent letter, but it didn't feel like achievement, not inside of him. He had merited the nomination, yes, but only in the most technical manner. He had qualified for it by being available and working hard and continuing as fast as he could. This in no way differentiated him from others, however. Many other writers deserved the nomination just as much. An apparition in his mind, one that eagerly devoured praise and that had been born from his ego's flatulent exhaust, had begun to howl and glut on the letter. However, a tired portion of him suspected that praise was not what the letter truly contained. Emery began to surmise he was in a particular spotlight simply for the fact that it now knew where to find him. He had been given a trophy once, and was now to be tolerated as a person for whom trophies might go. Medals and epaulettes. Jingles like chimes in his mind. Frivolous fringe and lace.

He had begun to feel like a slave to the bitch goddess of success, and worse, a goddess that did not understand him or know him. The letter sat in his breast pocket, warming him and yet disturbing his sense of worth. He felt strange and wary. The content of the letter had bolstered him, as it should have, but somehow the new honor had the quality of a growl. He should have told Beth straightaway. Now he felt muddy and foolish. He would tell her tomorrow, after the mail came so he could fake that the letter had just arrived.

Vivian stirred in his arm again. They were both uncomfortable, and should have been in a proper bed. After placing the phone on the receiver, he worked his second arm around her, cradling the little girl and admiring the slight bead of sweat that had surfaced on her exposed temple. He bent down and placed his cheek against her, feeling the warmth and life and his actual worth. His meaning was this, and existed beyond the ramparts of New York and television and letters that came bearing bad news or wonderful news, either of which somehow turned him cold inside, messages of failure and penalty or success and reward that inadvertently struck him in a cruel way, things he did not feel were truly his own. How could a person live up to these things? Having a name somewhat meant being enslaved by it.

He sighed and gently nuzzled his chin atop her small, lovely head.

"They're putting daddy up for another Emmy," he whispered.

**Chapter Twelve**

The nervousness was a hive, and many-particled; the crawls and shaky posturing had begun within his brain and back. The Los Angeles morning had arrived, after much fitful sleep, and the event was in his day's future. There was a buzzing sort of trouble in his legs and jaw. This waned with the onset of breakfast (of which he ate little), and returned as the time of the meeting drew close. He had planned, organized, and thought up a variety of responses and statements he might use if the producer cornered him in some way. They did not often do this, but he had met a few that had the habits of bears. Los Angeles was warm, coated in asphalt, and the glints from passing cars were incessant.

Emery's week had been given over to preparation and contingencies. Now, in proximity of the interview, his bones had begun to rattle against their joints and his thoughts had become scrawny. His skull felt small. He sensed he looked awkward and measly. This was remarkably similar to how he had felt before any jump in the Pacific.

The writer had little to lose if he botched the pitch, but so much to gain if he brought it around. As Beth glanced through the hotel window at downtown Los Angeles, marveling at the old, positioned flora and the broadness of the sky in such warm weather, Emery put his arm around her and tried to find some form of astonishment with the view. Through the prism of his fidgety mood, he could see but scrub and structure through the hotel window, little more. His nerves were vociferous, triggering on the anxiety. The day's schedule was a simple one, but it felt as if his career was now sweeping him across a floor with a push broom.

There were others like him, trying to get somewhere from everywhere else, and they kicked up so much dust. Every speck was trying to avoid the dustpan, and he was there, too. Emery stood beside his wife in the small hotel, the creak of the second floor wood beneath his feet. He had polished his shoes the night previous, and Beth had ironed his shirt and pants. The little ones were still asleep, but would wake soon for the adventurous day they had been promised.

The view from the hotel seemed hostile and overbearing. Hollywood. Motion pictures. He found himself staring at a glare on the glass, rather than what was visible beyond it. This town was an entirely new farm where the animals did a different sort of work, and upheld a more customized form of celebrity.

"Oh honey, your arm is shaking," Beth said, feeling this in the small of her back.

"I could really go for a couple of dehydrated martinis, right now."

"Should I call our doctor and see if he'll wire a prescription to one of the pharmacists out here? I'm sure he would," she offered.

"No, a visit from Meltown would make me tired. I'm just rambling; need to get my wits in order. I'm fine," he said, trying to make this truthful.

FADE OUT

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CUT TO:

Coffee. Cups of it. At a small diner loaded with bus-stoppers. Emery was alone and he felt out of place in his suit, but no one seemed to notice him. The coffee was scalding but he managed it down in quick sips. With only his thoughts to accompany him, he pulled from the hot, ceramic rim too often. When emptied, his first cup was refilled, became two cups, and the waitress kept returning. Four cups. He knew better but he had to keep doing something, and the coffee was poured for him relentlessly. He couldn't just sit there and bide time. The coffee would help, of course. He needed to be alert when he met with Mr. Dozier. He needed to be a salesman, which turned his stomach more than the excess of coffee and the lack of sleep. He had to pass a little time, and then, he would give his hard-practiced pitch for the program. The anthology prospect was never far from his thoughts.

Beth had taken the kids to the Los Angeles zoo, something in which Emery would have very much liked to take part, but he was in L.A. for business, a thing that was proving more nerve-twisting than he was wont to undertake. He had a small hope the studio would turn him away, decide his ideas foolish, that he could go home and work on what he felt was important. He had gained acceptance as a new sort of playwright, which was a moniker exceedingly rare for a writer in television, and there were angry eyes all over New York that saw him as having attained something they too, deserved, but had not yet been given. Was it any different in Los Angeles? He needed to focus. The pitch.

Emery enjoyed the promise in writing for television, the energy and little-guy-makes-good sensation of free-lance. The trip to Hollywood was a supreme departure from that. If this deal went through, Emery would be moonlighting again, and have a steady job on an anthology show. The volume of writing this would require necessitated he would hire others to aid him. This was a strange marriage of his labor-writing from radio with his imaginative writing in television. The prior would become an admixture of the latter, and he was not certain this was for the better. The income was undoubtable, however. He had made good money in the past year, more than he would have suspected was plausible for someone of his station, and he could continue earning that money indefinitely, so long as he did not dry out, and so long as people paid for the sort of work he wrote.

This interview, however, and the show it was gauging, had cash waiting in the lea, much more money than he had ever made. _The Other Side_ would pay greatly if it was purchased and aired. He would be as if a silly sultan clacking away on his black typewriter and surrounding his family in opportunity and the plushness of a secure life. College some day for Rebecca and Vivian would be possible. A small house for the Ashers could become a fitting house for the Ashers, and his girls would not have to share a room. He might even have a study, if he wanted it, if he made these things occur, if he pitched these luxuries to fruition. Something about the American dream clashed in his thoughts with something about wanting to be liked. One without the other felt empty. He was spinning always.

Coffee babbling in his belly, he paid his ticket and rode across town to the studio. He could have driven himself, or hailed a taxi, and even the studio had offered to pick him up at the hotel, but this was better. See the arena. Get to know the folks out here, in the event he was to become one of them. The bus churned his insides like a rock tumbler. Coffee sloshing up the sides of his stomach caused him to swallow back often. He had managed so little sleep the previous night. Two full hours, and another that had daubed into sleep across instances, minutes at a time. He had written talking points and committed them to memory. The bus jittered and thumbed over the occasional pothole and he went over his approach in his mind. The troublesome aspect of this interview would be that Emery was pitching something for which he was not known. He was known as a dramatist, but he was pushing for speculation. Emery wondered, quite often, if he was being foolish in straying so far from the milk-bowl. His doubt was a worm in the brain that dug out tunnels within tunnels. It wriggled into his thoughts often: Perhaps he was playing arson with his straw-built career.

Emery could still free-lance, of course. He could write teleplays and films, and even novels, if he decided to embark down the book path. Provided he could work hard enough, he might be able to wage all of these while still maintaining a weekly show. The intensity of his schedule would perch upon his mind a unique havoc, and would certainly subdue his family, but it was possible. A few years only. Like an ARMY stint. You got in, worked the situation as hard as commanded, and when you got out, the job had been done, you were keen and sharp, with a good paycheck in your hands, and you were ready to open the world for a time. If you survived, of course.

Through a weekly show, he could still access the drama he so loved, still take part in those opportunities people left laying around for people like Emery to find. He could remain the writer he had been, just on the side for a spell. He had two Emmys, a Radio and Television Writer's Annual Achievement Award, a Roderick MacGuffin Award, the rare Farnsworth Achievement in Television for _All the System_ , and he had been patted on the back by some of the biggest players New York had to offer. These had served to carry him forward, a vehicle in which he could haul his future manuscripts a certain distance, one he hoped would prove vast and not become bogged down in one or two early successes.

FADE OUT

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FADE TO:

The office was surprisingly small and not personal in feel. Bernie Dozier had a decent window behind his chair, with a view of several lots. There were three ashtrays on the desk, variously placed and identical, but they were suspiciously clean. Though small, there was enough space in the office that Mr. Dozier, who was not a diminutive man, could undertake animated, quick-turning strolls while talking, and the room somewhat allowed for the producer's inability to cease moving. He was a squat but sharp looking man. That his chin was lifted in disproportion to his neck, which seemed quite loose, made for an odd and almost turkey-like look. Mr. Dozier appeared to be a man who had lost much weight recently, and this, when considered in view of his large, thick hands, made him awkward.

There was a plaque on the wall, business-like, but upon closer inspection, this was an award for having won a motorcycle race at the Los Angeles speedway a decade prior. The weight loss, empty ashtrays, racing award... these depicted a man of the age wherein he begins to attempt reviving the naivety of his youth somewhat. The crisis of middle-age. A man making changes in some way, either good or bad for him, but changes. New York was full of this crisis, as were her television people.

In a suit unfamiliar to Emery, the man looked new. A new sort of person Emery was unaccustomed to meeting. Dozier was imposing, but this was set aside quickly once Emery heard the voice that came out of the man. It was somewhat high in pitch and gave him a slightly comical presence. This was alleviating.

"Good to meet you, though you'll remember we've met before," Dozier said.

"I was just thinking you look familiar, sir," Emery lied.

"In Manhattan. You gave a talk about television drama to a group of producers. I was there, said hello but we didn't talk."

"Oh, I see. Well, it's nice to run into you again," Emery said, aware of how contrived and unfelt this sounded. Emery was some guy from Ohio, a tourist asking a movie star for an autograph. His hands were sweating and his nerves reached an even simmer.

No, Emery had been _asked_ to come. He was an award-winning player from New York and he was present because he had made things happen. If the meeting went badly, it was a failed pitch, but if the meeting went well, it was a successful job interview. Things had to go well. He thought of Beth and the girls. Then his stomach. The abundance of coffee in his gut had reached low tide, and the sensation of its power was beginning to make itself known in the form of uneasy and near-complete digestion. It was too late for a visit to the restroom, however. He would have to wait.

"So okay, Mr. Asher, let's talk. I know you're big in the New York drama club, but what you've shown me so far isn't that. And I'm intrigued. Tell me about _The Other Side._ What are your ideas for this thing? How does she fly?"

Mr. Asher. He had been called this before, but he had never felt it appropriate. This discussion felt like business, and they were dressed for business, but there was a unique laxity in the air. Emery lit a cigarette, stood up, and began to pace. He needed to move in order to focus. Mr. Dozier looked at Emery's cigarette for a moment, seeming to smell the air with a sort of reverence. After several moments and a slight look of guilt, he opened a drawer and procured a cigarette case. He leaned back and lit up, had a slow drag, as if testing it. He possibly had quit smoking recently, and had not.

"Well sir, I see it like this: Fantasy but not fantasy. Horror but... never quite horror. Drama but never in full. Science fiction but-"

"But not science fiction, okay. I get it."

"...right. I want to take the clay of these genres and shape them around morality tales, real stories of the people and the... the troubles in our culture. The day's events, so to speak, but wrapped in sensational stories. You know, like from the comic books. You remember those, I'm sure."

"Morality and comic books?"

"Well, forget I said comic books. That... wasn't the right way to say it. And when I say morality, I mean in the literary sense, not necessarily biblical. Uh, things man ought not attempt, wishes that, if they were to come true would be... just... more damaging than someone might suspect... _twists_ , of course, there would be twists to the stories and-"

"Slow it down. I want to follow what you're saying."

"Right, okay."

Mr. Dozier licked his lower lip and sat there, gauging Emery and waiting. It seemed that, at any moment, Bernie Dozier would say 'at-ease'. Emery somewhat hoped this could occur. It would be clear. Easy. Then the talk might truly begin. This of course was not real. The reality of the room was that of two men, one in power and one seeking favor, and in these matters of life, there was always a pitch. They dragged from their cigarettes and Emery propped himself near the curtains, beside the view of the studio lots. This was the delivery and he had forgotten every talking point he had made the nights previous. He was standard and trapped at the top of his head.

"My apologies," Emery said, pausing for a moment, "Despite the good things that have happened for me in the past couple of years, I'm still quite nervous about pitching and... well, I think the L.A. coffee I had an hour ago is a bit stronger than what I'm used to drinking back in Ohio. Please, let me start over."

"Ah, got it. No problem," Mr. Dozier said.

Emery gathered his senses, had a drag from the cigarette, and with little planning, he went broad.

"I'll say it like this: There are terrible situations in the world that are brought on by our fervor for experimentation, for just knowing things, doing things, our curiosity, our science, just fighting and living in general. There's no end to the troubles we see in society. They're very human problems, and they're in us. And they come out in our capitalism, in our art, in our wars, marriages... in everything. What I'm proposing is that we show those troubles and tendencies... that we show the people what they're capable of and who their neighbors are, good and bad, but I want to do this in a fantastical light. I want to write and show the people stories that give light to our forays into war, our market economy, our classes and races and all the foibles and... But I want to show of these things in a sort of 'casing' that depicts the other-worldly, for the fun of story. I'm looking for that anthology. That's what I want us to make."

"Something tells me you're not talkin' about Flash Gordon."

"No sir. We use fantasy, horror, science fiction, myth... we use those things as a mirror to show the people the people, without pointing a finger directly. Just to keep ourselves at a distance. We make it more interesting and suspenseful by keeping it out of the everyday sort of drama people are used to. I want to show morality tales wrapped up in fantasy. Sugar with the medicine, so to speak. If we make it likeable, and fantastical, we can then say something important while viewers are still paying attention."

"You have an example?" Dozier asked, uncertain he understood.

"The stories I sent you are good examples of what I have in mind."

"Huh. To be honest, I didn't really find anything moral in there. They were good stories, but I'm not seeing this... moral connection."

"Then I did my job pretty well. You're not supposed to see it unless you're looking for it. There's a moral to the story, a meaning in the fable, but we don't want to be obvious about it until the closing monologue. This is so we can get around the nitpicking of sponsors and really tell something that hits home. I finished an outline two days ago for a new one. It could be the pilot, if you're interested. I call it _Everything is Broken_. It's a story that I think demonstrates what I'm envisioning for the show:"

"Let me hear it," Dozier said, simple. Emery had not considered that he might end up in a discussion about this particular story. It was quite new and he had not tuned the structure yet, or written it, for that matter. An outline was a series of ideas, and he was not certain he should be talking about details that had yet to exist.

"Sure," he agreed, not wanting to decline, "We start with a town named Marburg. We see a _you-are-now-entering_ sign. Then a car pulling off on the side of the road. Now, Marburg is a town gripped in fright. We don't see it at first, but it happens throughout the piece. The whole town is afraid to go anywhere or do anything. They rarely leave their houses, they never drive their cars, the shops are closed down, and they watch passersby from windows. No lights on. No anything. The trees are dry and dead. The roads are cracked. The place is just dead. But that's not the worst of it."

"An epidemic. There's a disease or something," Dozier threw in.

"No no, the worst is this: You see, the Sun hasn't come up. It's been years but the Sun simply _won't rise_. It's always just after five in the morning. Always dark. And the people are terrified. They hide in their homes and seldom come out."

"Weird. I like this. How do we show that?"

"Well, mostly with lighting. We set up-"

"No, I mean with the story. How do we give all this information out in a first act?"

"I have an outsider, the protagonist, whose car breaks down outside this town. That's where we start. We see all of this through his eyes and with directives. Our man enters this decrepit town looking for a garage, like any of us would. He's who we see all the dread in these simple folk, which is so uncharacteristic."

"Yeah okay, it's bad. Where does it take place?"

"Midwest."

"Eh. Try a duster town. El Paso maybe."

"Well, that could work, but it has to be an undisclosed location, so more people can identify, but a dry area would work, sure. So long as we have a fertile area on hand to show later, and a small town where the people don't mind us shooting their streets and homes for a few days."

"We could do it on a lot pretty easy."

"Maybe, sure. I suppose that would be a matter for the budget to work out."

"So what about the guy now? What happens next?"

"He walks through this seemingly forgotten town looking for a garage. About four minutes, maybe three distinct scenes. Here, we've got him seeing townsfolk, but they seem to hiding from him. He gets frustrated, then a little frightened. Isn't anything open? Sure, it's early, so places would be closed, but he sees people around, looking out at him through windows. Everyone seems to be awake, but hiding. Why will no one talk to him? When he approaches, they run off. We get a brief scene where he knocks on a door but the fellow inside, who he's seen in a window, won't answer. Our guy starts to question the morning, at this point, because he's noticing now that the Sun has been below the horizon for several hours, and that just doesn't make sense. He keeps looking at his watch, which we see with an ECU. Couple of times we'll do that, and it keeps reading 5:40 a.m. Seconds hand is moving, sure, but the hours and minutes hands are not."

"He's stuck in the same minute, over and over."

"Right, and he's getting scared. So, he finally catches a small boy near a shop with busted out windows. It's the garage, but it's closed down. Ramshackle. He gets hold of the boy and forces him to talk. The kid is upset, tells him everything; the Sun won't come up, the crops won't grow, and no one can leave the town because when they try, when they walk out past the outskirts, they only get lost and find themselves back in town. The whole town is broken and won't let them leave. The roads won't take you anywhere but town, no matter which direction you go. In a car, on foot... you just can not leave Marburg."

"How old is this guy?"

"Well, that's open, I suppose. Early twenties would be good, so he gets a little hot when no one will speak to him. Fighty, maybe."

"Teen could be good, too. Has dad's car, wants to get home. Troublemaker sort. Greaser."

"Sure, that could work. Anyway, the guy lets the kid go, more confused than ever, and we probably have the first commercial here, end of act I. We start out again and he's trying to use a phone in an abandoned drug store, but it doesn't work. Nothing does, of course. He ends up near a town square, and maybe here we have a nice roof-shot looking down, and he's shouting about how mad all these people are, and what's wrong with them? And what's wrong with this place? He's just losing it. Finally, he realizes he's not alone. The townspeople have left their homes and have surrounded the square. He spins about, frantic, seeing he's the center of their attention, and for once, they're not running away, but circling him. He runs to one edge of the square but gets walled in by the townsfolk. Runs another way, same thing. There's no exit. He's trapped in the town square and he's surrounded. His fists come up; what else is there? Everything gets very quiet as they draw around him. When they get in close, he starts shouting, "Get away from me, all of you!" or any number of other things. I don't have the dialogue yet. But they stop, and quietly, one of the hayseeds steps forward, starts explaining the circumstance of the town."

"Good, let's hear it."

"Right. So the hayseed tells him that five years ago, the town was fertile and full of life. Great place to live. But they had an idea on how to increase the town limits, by slowly and financially devouring a smaller, neighboring town. A greedy thing. So the town council pooled together with a lot of money from the local farmers, and they bought out just about every farm in that neighboring town, right out from under them with the help of two crooked bank managers. They did it to have more land for better crops. To make money. To be successful and large and a place worth living. And that neighboring town they did this to, it dried up and died. Everyone left. But strangely, the fields of these new acquisitions wouldn't grow anything, and slowly covered with dust."

"Shit, like a curse."

"Sure. Nothing in that other small town worked. The cars, the tractors, the phones... nothing. And all the people of that neighboring town left, one by one. Deserted the place. The Marburg people, however, were dismayed and they wondered what to do. They had all this new property but it was suddenly useless. And worse, the brokenness of that town spread, eventually overwhelming their _own_ crops. Like the neighboring town, Marburg started to wither, too and cease working, too."

"The curse spreads."

"Well kind of, I just mean that the badness of the neighboring town slowly overruns Marburg. Whatever happened in that dried up town started happening to Marburg. One of the crooked bank managers steps forward then, and he tells more of the story: Everything has broken down where they live. Everything. The cars stopped running first. Then the telephones shut off. The televisions went black. No radio. No lights. No machinery. No refrigeration. No anything. _Everything is broken_. And so are they. The people. Through the bank manager, we learn that none of them eat, none of them sleep, and sometimes they even begin to wonder if they're breathing, because it's like they forget to do so. They just sit in their houses, ashamed of themselves and unable to leave. There's no running water but they have no thirst. The roads always lead one back to town. Repeatedly. It's illogical, but unavoidable. The bank manager tells him, 'You can't escape, mister. You're trapped in this broken down town with all us broken down people beneath a sky where even the Sun seems to have broke down.' The man can't believe what he's hearing. We get a few short questions and answers to really clear everything and spell out the details."

"I'm with you. Get to the end."

"Now, after this bit of explanation, some of the townsfolk voice that they think God has forsaken them. They think they're being punished, but other townsfolk get very angry at this and the crowd starts fighting and bickering. Someone shouts out that they're cursed. Damned. Pandemonium breaks out. It's obviously been building for quite some time. Our man just wants to get the hell out of town. Away from this madness, any way he can, back to his life. He runs fast, blindly, leaving the crowd behind. A few give chase but they can't catch him. So yes, let's make him young, fast. He runs past several houses out into the scrub, and we cut to the commercial. Come back for Act III. Now, we have him running through the scrub, anywhere, just as fast as he can across the dry ground, trying to get away from Marburg. He's gasping for air, running and falling and running some more."

"It's a dream. Wakes up on the side of the road. Took a nap on a long drive."

"Not at all. He stops running; camera gives us his eyes, then what they see. It's the neighboring town. He's finally escaped Marburg, and for the love of God, the sun is coming up. It's dawn. He begins running toward this small town, the one that Marburg bought out and that died first. But this town, as we see it, is like an oasis in the desert. This town is thriving, beautiful, floral, people bustling about. It's like a view out of a dream. He runs into this town in frantic relief, exhausted and thanking God for saving him, for letting him leave the previous nightmare in which he had found himself."

"It's a trick. Something's fooling him."

"Exactly, though not the way we might at first think. Our guy is shocked. The audience is shocked. He runs toward the center of town and we see a deputy approach him. 'You all right, son?' Our man explains that he just left Marburg. He says the people there are on the verge of killing one another, that they're cursed and he was lucky to get out at all, that something needs to be done, fast. The deputy seems puzzled. 'Well friend, there hasn't been a Marburg in near five years.' 'What do you mean? I was just there!' he shouts. Then the officer tells him something like: 'Terrible thing. A fire burned the entire town to the dirt. Only thing left of Marburg is the steel supports of the buildings that used to be there, and rusty, abandoned cars. Near a hundred people were lost in that fire.' I mean, that's not dialogue yet, but you see what I mean. Anyway, our man stares at him. It can't be true. It can't be. And he says that. He turns around and looks back in the direction he came. No town in the distance, just the slight remains of ruins. We get a long shot of this, maybe eight seconds of slow zoom. 'No... no, that can't be," our man says. The deputy explains:'They made a bid to buy out all our farms here. Would have ruined many a family. Almost happened, too, but then that fire happened. Early in the morning. It's a shame it happened that way, but at least we still have our farms. Poor folk of Marburg never knew what hit them.' And then the deputy probably says something like 'If you ask me, you can't ruin other folk's lives without payin' for it some way or another.' You know, to address the theme, which is definitely greed and penance. A few smaller things, too."

"Marburg was a ghost town, then."

"Yes."

"Was it arson?" Dozier asked, smiling and lighting a second cigarette.

"We don't say. It's mysterious. Who knows what force caused this strange and tragic thing to happen. Our guy tells the deputy about how his car broke down outside of Marburg, and the deputy, a nice fellow, radios to his station and arranges a pull-truck to get the car and bring it to town. 'Officer, I'm... suddenly very hungry. You got a place to eat around here?' he asks. The deputy points the way and our guy heads into a diner, sits down, orders. We see him sitting there, lost in thought. But that's right when our narrator steps out and the scene stops. The narrator, whoever we get, I'm thinking someone with a deep voice, maybe Rory Setter, walks into the scene and addresses the audience, us. Right to the camera. He closes the story with the moral, like he would for every story, the overall gist of what's just been shown. Giving each story a touch of Aesop, you know? A sort of summary and wrap-up of the evidence and morality at stake. In this case, man's greed and a covetous nature for... just, the bounty of his neighbors. And it results, fantastically, in this hellish punishment of being lost to time and the working order of things. For Marburg's attempt to rob the treasures of others, their own treasures were stripped away. There's irony there. And they're dead. Busted. Ghosts in a true ghost town and struggling with their terrible fate ever on. Our man was lucky to escape; he's gotten free of the nightmare, but only because he was innocent and he didn't belong there. And then the narrator says where the story takes place: "Marburg. Just up the road. On _The Other Side._ "

"All right, I'm gettin' it, now. Name of the show. _On The Other Side_. That's a nice setup."

"And all the stories take place in some way connected with the title of the show. They all close with a monologue summary. We could open with one, too."

"Dave Allen wasn't kiddin' when he talked about you, Asher. You swing hard."

"I suppose I do, sir."

"You think in acts and you can really get in there. Now I see why they call you Mr. Emmy."

"Uh, thank you. I just think this way we can show something about people, nature, fate, all sorts of important things, all without agitating sponsors or alarming the people, because it's masked in spectacle. In fantasy. Or even a wild setting. But the theme is there. That's the deal. We can really _show_ a thing."

"You're sellin' what's sold, Asher. I'm in."

"You are? Well great, that's... that's what I was hoping to hear! Thank you, Mr. Dozier."

"I'm in the mood to acquire, and I like what you told me. The Sun not coming up... damn, it's creepy. Really bizarre."

"People would watch it and want to know why, want to know more. That's the bait, really. They'd stick around past the first act."

"So yes. Yes indeed. I want a pilot from you. We'll pay you if we use it or not. Either way. Don't worry about that. Give me that story you just told me, and another one. A new one. We're looking at a half-hour format. Let's make a pilot, Asher."

"A half-hour?"

"Look, I know you're pitching an hour drama, and that's how we started, but since those first letters we've had to change a few things with the network. Half-hour format is all we can think about right now for your show. But this is your kid, so you know the way with it. This actually makes things a lot easier for you, too."

"It's not an hour show anymore?"

"I want to be up-front about something. The anthology shows are dying. Even that fat pill, Hitchcock, is on the ropes here. Lot of bad writers who couldn't cut it in movies are making for the networks, while most of the good writers are jumping ship for the motion pictures again, to take up the slack. There's good money there, but here, we have no room for mistakes, and the audience is always changing. Fact is, people want to see the same characters each week, learn with them, and so on. That can work for an hour show. But the anthology format is only a couple stories above skid row right now and no one wants to give 'em much time. They're the ugly cousin right now. No offense meant."

"I've been called worse, but for better reasons."

"Well, the new audience wants familiar characters, stories that ring a bell, little switches in the feel of it all, but only little, and they want it to come back each week. Sponsors find anthologies unnerving, but you already knew that. Listen, Asher- it's gonna be tough to pitch this to my guys even at a half-hour, but I'll do it. I think this'll fly for a pilot and maybe more, if we do it right."

"Thirty minutes. I was hoping for more than that."

"We'll be lucky to get that." Emery sighed then, perhaps to clear his mouth for the anger that had begun trickling upward.

"Mr. Dozier, I'll be frank with you. Thirty minutes will not work. That's appalling. I haven't worked in the half-hour format in years. That's for other writers who haven't done anything or can't write an hour. I- This has meaning, Mr. Dozier. Too much for thirty minutes down to twenty-six with commercials. I'll need that hour. I can't accept any less."

Dozier chewed at the inside of his cheek then, annoyed in the slight, thinking over how to explain his resolve more clearly. He nodded after a moment.

"Asher, you're an east coaster, and a pro, sure, but out here, you're still a foreigner. I don't mean to insult you, but that's the fact. We all have something to sell out here. That's the system, and you can't buck it. I like your stories and I want to work with you, so I'm gonna give you some advice. This comes straight from the mouth of Ari Dozier, best door-to-door salesman in all of Sonoma, right up until the end: _You can't make the big sale from the porch. Only the little one. If you got somethin' good on your hands and you want to make the big sell, you gotta get inside the house_. Asher, what I'm offering you is bigger than a little sale, you see? It's rare and could be big. But more importantly, I'm letting you in the house. This network. That's where you pitch an hour, or other shows, whatever you've got on your mind. But you have to understand, nobody's gonna listen to you from the porch. Nobody. And that's exactly where you're at right now."

"I'm assuming this salesman named Dozier is a relative?"

"Yeah. My pop could sell a ham in a synagogue. I learned a lot from him."

"I see. Well, I do appreciate the advice, Mr. Dozier, but I'm not a salesman. I'm a writer." Dozier snorted at this.

"Do you sell the writing, Asher? Do people buy it?"

"Sure, in the end, but what I think-"

"Let me stop you right there. I have two other shows I watch over. Two of 'em. Both fill half-hour slots. That's the only way this is goin' over smooth, for anyone concerned. It's half-hour, weekly, or nothin'. Not to push things where you're not used to having 'em pushed, but I need you to pick yes or no before you leave my office. I don't like draggin' things out. Most writers who come in here don't leave with a pilot to make."

Emery's bluff had been called and he had no space in which to move. The half-hour format would give his stories all the stretching room of a coffin. He had written that way in the past, and due to his radio days, certainly knew the time-span well enough, but he was now accustomed to more. He had designed his stories around a very particular span of time. After a moment of reflection, the two men smoking their brands, the producer took on that expression of an annoyed man sitting out another. It seemed Dozier was waiting for the writer to go away. Emery began to panic.

His situation was somewhat alarming. He thought of his wife and daughters, the girls then at the zoo likely touring past the zebras and polar bears. They were the other three Ashers in his family, and they would want to know how the interview went. His wife somewhat adored the sprawl of Los Angeles and its weather. She would be upset to learn the trip had been for naught. Emery felt short and tried to make himself taller, then. He felt both dominated and dominating, and quite compromised. Better to get in while he could, and work his needs from the inside.

"Well, then it'll be a half-hour. Fine. But only at first. We need to get ourselves an hour. You should know that I _will_ keep pushing for it."

"Sure kid, you can champion that all you want. I won't promise anything on that end because it's not up to me. You might become my writer, and it may be your show, but it's their network and the sponsors' time. That's the breaks. We're all in bed and everybody gets their turn."

"All right."

"Then you're in?"

"Yes, I'm in. Let's make a show."

"Good. Let me see more and we'll maybe start talking out a deal, get you some staff. I got a buddy of mine, Orson Banry. He's been waitin' for something good to come along. He's part of the Orange Grove group. If you don't know who they are, they're a bunch of guys who write stories out here, get together. Sort of a club. A lot of talented guys. Seth Berber, Ray Scholl, that guy Larry Belmont who writes for The Gentleman- you read that mag?"

"My wife won't let it in the house. But yes, I do."

"Don't we all, right? What I'm getting at is that there are a lot of writers in the Orange Grove, and we get a lot of work out of 'em, and there's Orson, too. Just a mess of writers. Might be able to convince a few to sign on. Maybe you already have some people in mind, so however you want to do it, we can figure it all out a little further down the road, get to that when it's time. You'll have creative control, as was offered. I'll look around for a director and we'll collaborate soon enough."

"Orson Banry. Wow."

"Yeah, writes books. Kind of a hard-ass, if you ask me, but he's in a lot of mags, has a big audience."

"Oh, I'm very much a fan. I read his work in college. On my own, I mean. He wasn't part of the curriculum or anything like that."

"Oh yeah? Well, he sort of runs the Orange Grove thing. They meet at his place sometimes. We all live just up the road from each other around here. You could probably join his group, what with your Emmys and all. If we can get this pilot off the ground, you might even get him to be on your staff."

Emery blinked and swayed in his mind a moment. He had never thought something like this would be plausible by any stretch of luck. He had read nearly everything Banry had published, and Emery's love of other-worldly tales stemmed in part from that novelist's works. To be working close with a celebrated writer like Orson Banry would be an incredible arrangement. Could that really happen?

"Look around for some writers and people you know. We're always lookin' for new blood to try on things. I'll call a few directors and see who can shoot the pilot."

"Consider it done. I was thinking of having a different director each week, if we get on."

"Every episode? Eh... we'll get to that another time. I'll be up front here... that's not likely. What I need now is the broken town story, and then a new one. And I mean new. Fresh from your head. Think of it as a test. I want it written start to finish in the next week. Could you do that? Can you give me that in one week?"

Emery drew from his cigarette and then nodded.

"Mr. Dozier, I can give you that every week."

**Chapter Thirteen**

In addition to the two launching scripts for _The Other Side_ , Pacific Pictures still wanted the three film scripts; these being of various make and size. Emery was still under contract for three other scripts, as well. These were to be written for two studios back in New York, and for a decent amount of money. This particular facet of his schedule was troublesome. There were only so many scripts Emery could write in a given time, even with his accountably high output. The three-movie deal with Pacific Pictures and his conversion of _Coronach_ into a stage-play needed to be pushed back in order to work on the _Other Side_ pilot, and he needed to better polish the backup story for which Dozier had asked. This was fine, and he had time do finish his projects so long as he was diligent. The trouble was not in having enough time for these assignments, but in the ever-growing number of assignments that began coming in after his interview with Bernie Dozier.

Unless the pilot took off, Emery had no other writers to begin concocting more _Other Side_ episodes, yet he was expected, pilot or not, to begin submitting these, and quite soon. Worse, the network under which Emery and Dozier were working, CBS, now wanted several more scripts up front, to give to sponsors, so that the show might carry more weight than that given by its pilot. He had been asked shortly after his interview with Dozier to write a few more scripts, giving the show credence and casting it as both viable and intriguing. This was a common enough arrangement. It was useful to offer sponsors padding, in that the show's beginning needed to have that necessary feel of being assuredly underway, and worth a sponsor's investment. Emery polished and he wrote, and two weeks after leaving Los Angeles, Bernie Dozier sent out the contracts.

With _The Other Side_ now officially contracted into being (for a pilot, at least), the Ashers began to pack their belongings. The constant work a show would need required the family move to Los Angeles, and they were excited at the prospect of seeing anything outside of Cincinnati. Emery was gambling on the success of the as-yet-to-be-filmed pilot. In the scenario it might fail, he supposed it was time to leave Ohio, anyway. If he rotted out in Los Angeles, he knew it would be time to relocate to New York. There were options, and for a short while, the Ashers had the money to wage these options. The girls had been quite fond of the Californian desert city, and were looking forward to living there, should they end up being able to stay. With Beth as guidance, each of the daughters packed their lives into boxes and prepared to leave their entire known world behind. Everything was riding on the pilot episode and Emery was emphatic that every aspect of the project be given his scrutiny.

Emery packed badly, mind lost in stories and mental rewrites. The family was lucky to have been offered aid in the move. Susa, his mother, was looking somewhat worn and tired, but her energy in helping the two children pack was rather surprising, and much needed. Beth's grandmother was less helpful, but her presence added a touch of support to the move, and she had proven masterful at keeping Beth's ear. This meant that Emery's mouth had little to spill into, which kept him, in turn, working and packing. The typewriter would be the very last thing packed for the move. It sat on the kitchen table, attended to frequently by the ever-growing sense of responsibility, and fear, to which Emery was falling prone.

Beth was nervous, more so than when they had moved into the house they were now leaving. Things had changed since arriving in Ohio. Money had lifted and lowered them in ever unpredictable surges. They had both grown accustomed to the Cincinnati weather and the lay of the town. They had begun the real start of their marriage here, and become parents. Ohio had fostered all of this, and now they were moving on into a more unknown territory, financially and geographically. Los Angeles was across the country, in the coastal west, and in fact, was just about the farthest west one could go and remain in the lower forty-eight.

Beth spent time talking warmly with her grandmother, who now had come to accept Emery as a good man, a provider beyond his physical lineage (a lineage she had always disliked much). Emery was eager for this attention, and when he wasn't working over a story in his mind while packing, gave in to slight antics to get all the women laughing. Having his family, both immediate and parental, blood and in-law, together in one place for the benefit of helping him begin this new venture in his career was a magnanimous and heartfelt arrangement. He wanted to pack slower to let this continue as long as possible, yet had to rush through things in order to get back onto the page at hand.

Emery had driven into the meat of the show quickly, before even a single article had been packed, staying up several nights in the previous week typing the pilot and scrounging through his mind for other stories. He revisited older works that had not been purchased, making notes on them about ways in which he might re-tool them for a speculative mood. This self-propelled rush and lack of sleep provided him with much. His output was strong and he was getting the stories down in due order. The half-hour format, while bothersome and a bit degrading to him at this stage in his career, came flooding back with emphasis, and it _did_ make the scripts shorter, which meant he could write more of them in a shorter span of time. He was good at it, and felt comfortable with the devices and breaks inherent to the time-span and form.

Mr. Dozier had received the pilot and backup and accepted them both over the telephone, provided Emery go over them and straighten out a few details. Dozier now wanted a line-up for the sponsors, and quickly. Emery was onto it. He was making the thing happen but his mind was the worse for wear. He needed writers but they needed to be handpicked, and with little time, Emery was simply trying to hold on as long as he could. He wanted to get the program in working order, sustaining itself long enough that he could take the time to review writing samples and hire some relief. His thoughts were in temerity the same weariness that his mother wore on her physical frame. Cayuga in the Summer, a short and blissful time of relent, would be a godsend, though with their relocation to Los Angeles, this Summer vacation would now be a far more expensive trip, and by plane, not a car.

"When will your television go on?" Susa asked her son as they settled books into boxes from the shelves in the living room. Her language brought from him a smile.

"I'm not sure yet," Emery admitted, "We still have to film the pilot. I'm now incorporated with Asher Productions, which will split the end with CBS. Bernie Dozier, my network producer, hired a guy named Sol Jamison to executive produce, and Bob Keith has signed on to direct the first two episodes. Probably more. I haven't met Bob, but I've seen one of his dramas for Playhouse 90, and I like him, so far. We need writers now, to get the executives off my skull and create a line-up. And we need actors that will take things seriously, despite the speculative bent. And a host. We need a host immediately."

"Is the host like an emcee?"

"Sure, like that. Introduces and closes each episode. Tour-guide, sort of. He'll have to look good and have the right voice."

"You know who has a wonderful voice that I adore hearing?"

"Who's that?"

"Edward Gaines."

"Well, that's a great voice, but have you ever seen him?"

"No, why?"

"He's ugly as sin and enormous. You can't put him in front of a camera."

"Emery, that's cruel. You shouldn't think that way."

"No more cruel than not wanting to be seen in shabby clothes. The look of television is the handsome sort. Pretty and prettier women. Handsome men."

"Oh, you know who is handsome? Arch Oboler. Remember him? I saw him in Time once. He's dashing, isn't he? And his voice is deep, of course. Is he still doing _Lights Out, Everybody_?"

"One of my favorites. But no, he's doing movies now. That show went off the air some time ago."

"Oh? That's a shame. I liked it."

"As did I. Arch Oboler and Orson Banry are two of my biggest influences. Both live in southern California, but Oboler's voice is too deep, really. I do want to try and contract Banry to write for the show, if that's even possible. Maybe Oboler, too. That would be excellent. But for the host, we need someone personable, handsome, with a strong voice, but someone lesser known than Oboler. A good voice, but sort of mid-range."

"Well, how about this? _You're_ handsome. And sometimes you can be personable. And you used your voice on the radio. In college. So, why don't _you_ be the emcee?"

"Host. It's not really an emcee sort of job. And that's appealing, sure, but I have to be a specialist here. I can't do everything. I do enjoy that you felt the need to use the adverb 'sometimes' before 'personable'."

"It's only that you can be a touch off-putting when your head is in the clouds."

"Beth has explained this to me in great detail, yes. I can't host, though; I'm too short and I'd feel vain standing in front of a camera. I belong on the page. I haven't acted since high school, and I was only tolerable. You remember, I'm sure."

"Well, I'd say it was better than tolerable."

"You were made delusional by your maternal sense, then. William was the better actor."

"Say, do you still have that little play the two of you wrote? It was so cute."

"Oh, he says it's long gone, but I know the rat has it out there in D.C. He won't admit to it, but I know. I believe he'll one day use it for blackmail."

The evening wore on, and Emery began to cudgel the particular seed his mother had planted in him: Serving as host of his own show. The more he struck at the outer layers of the idea, to pulverize it, the more nutrient he found beneath. He discounted the idea, repeatedly, but like a filching relative, it only came back, each time with a better argument.

The family went out for dinner, somewhat of a celebration at having finished most of the packing. The talk was stilted, but honest, and he felt a sense of uniqueness in being the only male present. He was situated at a round table in the middle of the restaurant, facing his family of women, noting the similarities between family members, regardless of age. Vivian was following Beth's physical blueprint closely, but Rebecca had begun to look much like his mother, Susa. Emery had never looked like either of his parents, and now his daughters did not resemble him. This was a little isolating, but thoughts on it were easy to push away. They were not important, in the larger scheme.

There was one idea however, that did keep recurring as he sat at the table and ate with his family. The notion of hosting his show would not stay dormant. What a silly idea. He rid himself of it by thinking over a newer script he had in mind. The host dilemma returned. He struck up a conversation with Rebecca, adoring as he was of her. When the short discussion ended, the notion of hosting flooded back into him. It was unshakeable. He _could_ do it, and his voice would work, he supposed. He had a small range of voice experience with radio, but had never acted on a stage as an adult. No, he would be too busy with the writing and producing. There would be no time to sit for a makeup artist and then situate himself before a camera. Someone would be hosting the pilot, and Emery wanted to find that someone soon.

During the family's pleasant dinner out, with his mother's idea rattling in his upper matter, he finally allowed himself to pretend being the host for a short while. He drifted, fantasizing the scenario while his wife and mother talked, while his daughters moved about in the chairs and tried to keep their elbows off the table. He would wear a suit. It would be a clean, well-cut thing that made him look taller. He would slick his hair back.

The food arrived and the conversation was subtle. He returned to a soundstage in his mind. In his suit, with his hair, he practiced orating the introduction to the pilot episode as if the host, to see if he might work in that position. This was a wonderful place to play, and he lost track of conversation. As the Ashers ate, a glowing, silvery cloud settled over Emery's brows and swallowed his mood into make-believe. He toyed with the notion of memorizing lines, of having his makeup applied, of being the man on camera. Hosting a show, with an audience watching, would somewhat make him a leading man. Emery was being dopey and perhaps swollen. This fancy flight over dinner was enjoyable, however, and playing the host of his television show did seem to work nicely in his mind. Such a conclusion was expected, of course; few men made themselves fools in their imaginations.

He could do the job, though, couldn't he? The studio had tried several people with the role of host, and none had worked well. The closest had been Warren Benton, but his voice was so deep that it caused the pilot to feel much darker than it needed to be. Benton's voice could have made an opening shot of Mayberry feel like Sodom. Emery practiced in his mind and, when his family had gone to sleep for the evening, he practiced aloud in his garage. He spoke amidst the smells of grease and metal and old tools, pleasant smells comforted him and made the air seem familiar.

"... a town on the brink of ruin," he practiced, gesturing a bit and trying to get the feel of things, "a place where the Sun no longer rises, and nothing can function. A broken town. Its name is Marburg, and the quaint, idyllic residents of this town have become its prisoners. Where is this fractured place? It's out in our American farmlands and scrub, just down the road... on _The Other Side_. On... _The Other Side._ A town on the brink of ruin. I'm Emery Asher, and I'm a jackass. Where is this fractured place? A place where... the brink of ruin. A town lost in the folds of reality. A place where the Sun- the _Sun_ \- a _place_ where the Sun no longer rises... and nothing can function." He used a carton of oil on a shelf as his camera, and he practiced performing a monologue to it for nearly an hour before he felt he had it right.

The following morning, he called Bernie Dozier to announce himself as host. Bernie was against it immediately. Emery gave an introduction to the pilot episode he had rehearsed. He narrated and exampled how he would do it.

"Yeah, that's nice, but you're not an actor. You're a writer. And a producer. Asher, our job is to build this car and keep it clean, and we can't do that if you're driving it around all day."

Bernie argued at first, and with good points, but in the end allowed Emery to choose himself as host for the pilot, to see how it went. If it came off bad, they could find an actor to shoot the intro and exit scenes before air-time. It would be an easy edit in post-production. Bernie's feeling was that a pilot was only that. It needn't go further if the thing became a mule. The man said as much, giving a worst-case-scenario over the phone. This lack of interest in the overall potential of the show disheartened Emery, but he supposed it came with Dozier's position.

They had chosen _Everything is Broken_ for the pilot, which was an understandably more polished piece and, after being re-designed for the half-hour length, worked somewhat well. The studio had an army of cameramen and various personnel, from which Emery could study and choose his team, in so much as one could choose from a smaller pool of those selected for him, but there was one sort of player that proved difficult in all realms of production: The actors. There was a pressing need to know who might play what at this point in the production, but on-air talent was tricky. Actors were wild-cards. Emery knew many, and his coming-up in the television world had introduced him to the running mill of New York talent. He could ask any number of them to take part, and most would likely agree to a role in his program, given his reputation, but Emery did not want to drink from that pool of New York blood. Hollywood was chock full of actors and using his New York comrades so early might keep him from using the new actors he wanted to meet and hire. He needed to imbed himself in Los Angeles, in the network and the new pond with the new fish. He needed to get comfortable with the scene before branching out.

Bernie had been right, of course. The anthology programs were dying, and people most certainly wanted to see familiar faces in a show, to lean on them and get the delivery from a comforting, yokefellow character. Emery had exhausted his thought on this matter, and concluded what he felt to be a nice work-around for his situation. Every episode would be different in construction, and this included the actors hired. This might cause the program to lose its identity in the eyes of an audience, as Dozier had explained, feeling that would be a supreme negative. Repetition was crucial, but Emery had other ideas on how to give this. If a man changed his personality again and again, could it be ever said that you really knew him? No. There was much in character. A person relied on repetition, on base traits, when gauging another. This was obvious, but a good actor knew how to change the face just right, pseudo-emotion and the way of fetching an audience, bringing them in close. To make an anthology show work, the host would need to be static, with his presence on varied sets, in each episode. The host would serve as the familiar face, the friend you could trust, but something else would need to occur. There needed to be more than a constant host where public recognition was to be fostered.

The answer for Emery was simple: Talented celebrity. Episodes lightly peppered with the occasional large name to bridge that trouble of the unfamiliar for his audience. Bringing in recognizable celebrity, with a static host, could function to draw the audience that now favored regularity and repetition. America was intimate with her actors, and if he were to use familiar faces such as these in his teleplays, if he could catch them, then the stories would gain some of the potency that hour dramas called, while still working for the crowd that enjoyed the serialized, character-driven, episodic shows. The host would be the ever-present character, and the actors would be the drama. As long as he didn't re-use the same actors repeatedly, he might have enough familiarity in his strangers to make them feel trustworthy, and thus, believable. Of course, under the front porch of Hollywood lurked a special sort of talent, a particular species of personality: The star. America loved every facet of these well-lit and scrutinized creatures.

There was a problem in large-scale actors, however. This breed made the motion pictures. That was their pedigree, and television was viewed by many as a successful fad, but certainly no substitute for cinema. Landing one of those starlit fish wouldn't be easy and might take time, as well as more money than could feasibly be spent. That was the conundrum. He would have trouble trying to get Hollywood on board, as the motion picture industry was more lucrative and time-consuming, but he did not want to rely on the New York system that had shouldered him to the particular rung at which he now grasped. What could he do? In the end, Emery concluded that he would call on his New York friends in time. _The Other Side_ would be a better show for them by the time he offered it, a wondrous machine built from his sweat and foraging in Hollywood. For now, his focus on the pilot would necessarily need to consume him, and the casting of local actors for it could not wait.

Revisions on potential scripts for future episodes required time, and they were needed with immediacy. He typed through the nights, slept little, and always burned the cigarette to the filter. While he had a small library and study in one of the rooms of the new home, the late hours still called him to type at the kitchen table.

CUT TO:

INT. SOL JAMISON's OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON

An office of meager display. SOL JAMISON, Executive Producer, sits behind his desk. The office door is open.

JAMISON stands up as EMERY enters. It is just the two of them. They shake hands.

JAMISON:

Mr. Asher. I'm glad you could make it; I thought his would be a good time to meet and get to know one another. Bernie Dozier has had some nice things to say about you, and I was hoping we could discuss the pilot. I know I called on short notice, but I feel we need to settle a few early things.

EMERY:

(with a smile)

No trouble at all. And it's good to meet you. Just call me Emery.

JAMISON:

Will do. I'm Sol. Listen, there's a small problem with the pilot.

EMERY:

Oh?

JAMISON:

A group of people going into a neighboring town to destroy them and take their land. That's the problem. See, it kind of reeks of Germany right around fifteen years back or so, if you get my meaning. People are going to think we're hinting at the Nazis.

EMERY:

Well, I suppose we could be talking about a Nazis, but... no, we are not. The invading town ends up destroyed, inhabited by ghosts with no direction, a broken place. There's a parallel in there, sure, but it's not a conscious point. It's not about Nazis. It's about greed and penance. It's about loving thy neighbor.

JAMISON:

No parallel. We don't want it. There's not a sponsor in all of America that would market with a piece that has anything to do with sympathy for Nazis. Ghosts or not.

EMERY:

It's not about Nazis. It doesn't even draw much of a parallel, in fact. That's reaching, and I didn't intend anything like that. If it came up publicly, we could easily say there isn't any such comparison in there. The connection is quite loose, if anyone wanted to make it.

JAMISON:

No. We like these people at first. We feel bad for them. Hell, we're rooting for them. It doesn't matter that there's only a 'parallel' or a loose 'connection', however you want to phrase it. You can't make the public like somebody and then have it turn out that somebody is sort of a damn Nazi. It's a slap in the face and I won't run it. And while I'm at it, those sleazy bank managers that help the town do this thing? That seems a little shylock. Now, I know neither of us wants that, and Levy's Complete Emollient sure as shit won't. And they're paying for your travel, you understand?

We spin with camera around EMERY, slowly at first but then faster. Emery is speaking but we can't hear him. We make three revolutions as a loose assembly of horns begins to blare, alarm-like but still somewhat rhythmic and musical.

CUT TO:

Flashback sequence. We see EMERY in a montage of work and bustle for The Other Side. The horns continue blaring, the rough outline of a tune. EMERY is busy with an assortment of people. We cut frequently from this to EMERY sitting at his typewriter in his new, Los Angeles house. These brief scenes take place in a small study, and at times at the kitchen table.

The tune abruptly ceases as we see EMERY clouding with smoke from dozens of cigarettes.

FADE TO:

The weeks preparing the script, already accepted. The roving for actors and talks with Bob Keith to direct. Having to finagle the set department to give him what he needed, fighting to get the show the ability to film on location like cinema. Driving out into the goddamned desert to find a place to shoot. Putting up with Bernie's brass-tack approach to everything. Moving his entire family to Hollywood. It was exhausting and it cut deep.

Sol Jamison. Tall and vociferous. Mean. In the executive producer's office, Emery sat like a rebellious child, smoking and thinking over what he had been told. What did Sol Jamison want him to do, remove the residents and the town from the script? These things _were_ the script. What sort of paranoia was this? Emery sighed, having spiraled into an earnest mood. He allowed in himself something he only reserved for back-against-the-wall scenarios: Tacit coldness with an ounce of venom. This was the sort of flack talk he had once used on opponents before his boxing bouts, back in the ARMY.

"You look here, Sol. I don't know you that well, and I have no idea if this is out of the ordinary for you, or if you're just this damn picky and paranoid all the time, but the pilot is already in motion and we're running it. Your argument has no legs, so it's gone. Move past it. And if you can't handle this production, Bernie and I will find someone else who can do that without gumming it up. The last thing I need right now is someone I don't know haggling over literary themes with me. You're the money guy and I'm the story guy, you hear?"

"All right, now you just stop right there," Jamison said, seeming quite roused.

"No, you stop," Emery continued, "This is my show, and your moral qualms won't touch it; you have no creative control, understand? None. That's mine, and it's contractual. You're supposed to keep things moving, not interfere, so reconcile yourself and help me get this show on its feet."

There was an uncomfortable moment in which nothing was said. Emery stood and waited, concerned with his own behavior, as well as little proud of himself. He felt as if he had boxed a good-looking match with bright gloves in front of discerning, invisible spectators. Jamison quietly collected his anger, and when he spoke, it was with extreme enunciation.

"Don't you... _ever_ ... talk to me like that again, you understand?"

"Well, if you're-

"EVER. You take that tone with me and I will break your arrogant, shit nose. I will drag you to the fucking airport and send you back to New York with your dick in your hand. You work for _me_ , not the other way around."

"Threats, then? You just got your sorry self fired. I was _asked_ to be here, and it's my show. We're doing it the way I wrote it. That's the fact. You'll be off this show by nightfall." Sol scrunched his mouth and turned his eyes down. While keeping his gaze on his desk for a moment, and not on Emery, the redness in his face slowly subsided. His back straightened. He was not, after all, going to break anyone's nose, it seemed. After a moment, he swallowed and spoke, having recovered a minimum of calm.

"Asher... I'm executive producer on this show. Do you understand what that entails?"

"I know my way around a production, but this is _my_ production, for once."

"Oh, mine mine mine. Me me me. Buddy, do you have any idea what writers get out here? Nothing. Dime a dozen, and those Emmys of yours are the only reason we're still having this conversation."

"I see; I'm privileged to have someone like you change my story," Emery said with distaste.

"No, you're privileged because you've proven you can work for this network. You're getting the benefit of the doubt, Asher. Most aren't offered that. Look, I'm not some shill hired on to do a little job here for a show. This isn't New York. _Your_ show pumps with _my_ blood, got it? I'm the executive branch. Bernie is the judicial. You're the legislative. Keep that close to your brain, because if we can't work together now, this show goes nowhere. In a hurry. And nobody wants that."

"I'm not changing the story. What you want removed isn't even in there."

"Then we go home and relax. Tomorrow, we'll just start over with a different story. It's easy. You got tons of 'em, I hear."

Emery lifted from his chair quickly, muttering profanity to himself as he spun back. Sol also stood quickly, uncertain about whether the argument had become physical, after all.

"...waste of my time," Emery ended before walking out and letting the door rock hard against the frame.

CUT TO:

C.U. of Jamison's desk. We pull back until we can see most of the office, from a ceiling corner. This is somewhat like security camera footage in angle and feel. We see the rate of time speed up in the room. The scene is now silent and in fast-motion. JAMISON's body twitches about as he works over several sheets of paper on his desk, setting them aside one by one, rapid fire. He yawns and exits the office, returns, takes his shoes off.

The camera slowly pulls toward him as he writes a paragraph in a memo pad. We reach a medium shot, see JAMISON speak briefly to a woman who enters the office and who quickly leaves. He then puts his shoes back on, exits the office for a bit longer, returns again. He leans back in his chair. The camera slows to normal speed and the audio fades in: The phone is ringing. We see and hear Sol Jamison answer the phone with his name, sitting up in his chair, tired. We hear the voice of Bernie Dozier, scratchy and patched over the audio. The call unfolds.

DOZIER:

Sol, what the hell happened with you and Asher?

JAMISON:

(rolls his eyes and frowns)

Went straight to you, huh? Well, I told him the truth. I was honest with him. Bernie, that guy doesn't know his place. It's not that he's an amateur and just doesn't know how things work out here, it's that he doesn't care. He's arrogant and full of himself. Bad for business. I'd get out of bed with him as soon as you can.

DOZIER:

That's not an option yet. And now it's worse than him being arrogant; he's really pissed off, Sol. The noise he's making is like you don't belong on the show. He said you two almost went to blows. Is that true?

SOL:

I don't feel good about that, but yes, we almost did.

DOZIER:

Sol, he wants you fired.

JAMISON:

What do you think about that?

DOZIER:

I think he just hung up on me and my ear is hot. I think I'm statin' the obvious when I say that you need him to like you, Sol. He has to like you. And you have to like him. Or at least pretend like you do.

JAMISON:

This is why we keep writers out of production.

DOZIER:

Well, that was pictures. You're in television now. The rules are changing, especially when the writer produces. It's just the way of things. What I'll do is see what I can glue back together on my end, but you're gonna have to be more giving, you understand? You can't take the hard line with this guy. Find another way.

JAMISON:

Those Emmy awards should have never been invented. They make for bad blood and petulant people. Some rules shouldn't change, Bernie. And _he_ took the hard line with _me._ Somebody needs to sit that jackass down and explain how things work on a network show. The writer doesn't call all the shots.

DOZIER:

They get to call a few of 'em if they win Emmys, Sol, whether you like it or not. That's a fact. Especially when they have creative control as producers. We're changing with the times, and this is a different setup than you've done before. CBS needs a Hitchcock that can work in an 8pm slot, and for now, Asher's the guy we're gonna move with. This kind of show is based around one guy. He's the main event in it, just like Hitchcock at 9:30. Hang in there. I _do_ agree with you, brother; you're right, somebody does need to sit him down and tell him more about how this all works in the west. Thing is, that somebody is you.

JAMISON:

Fine, but he isn't gonna listen. That's how all of this started. He doesn't get it, and he loses his temper. Wants everything _his_ way. I don't like tantrums. It'd be better if you talked to him.

DOZIER:

Better for who? Not for me. You two are on the same ship, understand? You're gonna shake hands and run it as smooth as you can. Give him a call tonight. Shake hands.

JAMISON:

Old Spice doesn't like him, either. This Nazi script... What the hell can we do with something like this?

DOZIER:

The show is solid, and I'm sure the boys at Old Spice see that, we just hit a bump with the pilot. I'll talk to him about it, this time, but you gotta call him tonight and make friends, all right? I can't babysit the two of you, and if it comes down to me having to get rid of one of you, and he's the award-winning head writer, AND the on-air talent, AND a producer... Jesus, Sol.

JAMISON:

Wonderful. Just cut off both balls for me, Bernie; thank you.

FADE OUT:

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FADE IN:

EXT. A RURAL, DUSTY ROAD - 5:50 A.M.

We see EMERY, on the side of the road, smoking and pacing on the opening location of EVERYTHING IS BROKEN. There is a Beltline Coupe pulled over, its hood up, and TOM HAWKINS, an actor, is sitting in a collapsable chair nearby. HAWKINS is being touched up by a MAKE-UP ARTIST. The CAMERAMAN and his FIRST ASSISTANT enter the shot, smoking and collaborating, pointing at something off in the distance.

EMERY:

(to passing GAFFER)

Say, Rodger- has Hawkins talked to you about the lights? Looking later in the morning, and not six?

RODGER:

I know. We were changing it but then we were told to keep it bright like it is now. Jamison wants the car clearly lit, he says. Something to do with—

EMERY:

With Beltline being a sponsor. Christ.

CUT TO:

Emery sitting on the trunk of the coupe, JAMISON bent over his knee. Emery then lifts his hand and begins spanking the man, disciplining him. Jamison wails and cries. After a moment, Emery sighs and stops the beating. He lifts a bottle of Old Spice with a nipple on it, begins drinking from it with a frown. After a moment, we see EMERY cram this nipple into the executive producer's mouth. This quiets Jamison.

FADE TO:

Compromise. Altering the story proved necessary and, while upsetting, was an allowance that needed to be made in the effort of negotiation, which was more sufferable than surrender or murder. The story change was throughout, but did not affect the flow or breaks. Emery would need but a day to finish the new script. Any potential allusion to Nazis and Jews was removed, in that, instead of Marburg trying to take over the next town with the aid of bank managers, the second town runs dry on its own, and approaches Marburg for help. Marburg, not doing well either, turns them away. The curse comes to Marburg soon after, for, in essence, refusing to help their fellow man. The Sun would be stuck at seven a.m., instead of just prior to sun-up.

It was accepted by Jamison and the sets were commissioned. All began. Emery still didn't have a writing staff, but with an extension to his deadline from Pacific Pictures, and the collapse of a deal with Studio Gailer in Chicago, he had some time to put things together for _The Other Side_. At least in the endeavor of hiring writers, he would not be hindered by the executive producer for anything beyond monetary concern. The writers would be of his choosing. He hoped.

CUT TO:

JAMISON, face flush, standing with EMERY behind the garage building on the outdoor set of Marburg. Emery rolls his eyes at something JAMISON has said.

JAMISON

(angry)

No, you called him boring. You told him to go back to school. What the hell is wrong with you? Is your skull made of brick? His uncle's a dealmaker at Beltline and we all made sure you knew that in advance. You just cost us our sponsor, you ungrateful prick.

EMERY:

(defensive)

We had a good exchange. We talked and I told him he wasn't the guy, and he wasn't sore about it at all. The kid understood when I said no. He was fine, Sol. If he screwed us with Beltline, I had nothing to do with it.

JAMISON:

I told you to be careful with that one. Treat him right. He wasn't okay. He went crying all the way to his damned uncle.

EMERY:

He couldn't write. That is not my fault.

JAMISON:

Then you bench him as a pack-mule and toss him re-writes. That's as good a start as any. You don't insult him.

EMERY:

Sol, listen... If Beltline backed out, can we go back to the opening shots and make it look like night again? The way it's supposed to look?

JAMISON:

No, keeping shot is how we make up for it. I'm not losing any more money on the damned time of day. We keep it the way we got it now and we let Beltline know we're sorry. You know how many episodes they were willing to pipe? Three. Three that now have major backing. Jesus, you're a piece of work, Asher.

We see the ghosts of Marburg crowd around the two, having left the visible set. The GHOST OF A HAYSEED steps forward.

HAYSEED GHOST:

Thing is, it was one sort of town that didn't want to help another sort, that's all. And that other sort hated the first. They couldn't get along. Bad blood. All the two had to do was agree. Would have been simple to do, but we were damned fools for how we did. Could have avoided all of it, and this curse wouldn't have noticed us and come. We could have grown together and lived right.

CUT TO:

EXT. THE EGO - NIGHT

EMERY eating steak.

CUT TO:

INT. A STUDY - DAY

JAMISON butchering a steer.

CUT TO:

EXT. BEYOND THE STUDY'S WINDOW - NIGHT

EMERY smoking and typing outside.

CUT TO:

INT. THE EGO - DAY

JAMISON dragging red ink through a list of expenditures.

FADE TO:

EXT. MARBURG TOWN SQUARE - 5:50 AM

A quiet, Mayberry ghost-town that has been lost to the other side.

We see EMERY in his suit, spinning around in the town square, his appearance one of panic as he gasps and turns about, his walk through Marburg a nightmare that has brought him near to his wit's end. The townsfolk approach, having surrounded him. The HAYSEED GHOST steps forward, wearing Emery's suit.

EMERY

(panicked)

What's... what's wrong with all of you?! What's happened here? No, you stay away from me! You're all mad! You hear me?! ALL OF YOU... YOU'RE ALL MAD!

ZOOM TO:

The pilot. On the air. The beginning of the weave. Goaded with executive directives, punctures and cuts. The episode had been eye-droppered its unpleasant medicine in the way a chemist might force his beloved science on a test animal. The pilot episode was thriving for a short while, possibly enough time to gain that elusive prize of reproduction, to be honored with more life. The pilot was a threading of the needle, one that could tug each coming episode through the fabric of an audience. Viewing a potential series launch was an introduction to a timeline, an exaggeration of reality that might continue, if events allowed. On the pilot's shoulders was the weight of impossibility, for what might come could have been anything, and the initial episode needed to support as much, to seem open as a child's mind, effortless, yet governed by the minds of crafty adults. This was a collaboration of the ever-evolving team, but a work that needed the feel of singularity.

The first episode had to live with the premonition it would die early and face that all-too-common fade to black, a fade into nothingness. In this mode, Emery, Dozier, and Jamison had put together a hard-won, ornate structure that could be blown to bits by the merest breeze and scattered to the pecking of unknown birds. Enter failure from stage left. When a pilot went right however, when an audience approved, when the gamble came up with a good hand and the critics were bemused, and when the next day's reviews had the air of young men who had just held hands with girls for the first time...
**Chapter Fourteen**

The train was but two cars, though these were more than satisfactory for the shots they needed of the interior. The first assistant director had captured a nice series of pivot shots near Mt. Hood, up in Oregon, during a vacation the week prior. He had managed to find a long train making its way out of the mountains, and he had filmed it close from his cabin's rooftop. This had been quite smart of him, and the shots would be good material for introducing the length of the train and propelling the mountain backdrop illusion.

FADE IN:

EXT. ROCKY MOUNTAINS – LATE EVENING

A long passenger train travels through the snow-heavy mountains.

CUT TO:

Payment. After compensating Union Pacific for their permission to use those shots of their train, the establishing shot was ready for the editing block. The real work would be in developing the false interiors on a mock train. There were three main interiors that needed to be built, and these were the spots where the majority of the scenes would take place. They had secured a high-rise office for the flashback sequence, but still had yet to find an idyllic town for the end of the second act, and again, in greater detail, for the conclusion of the story.

Emery moved about on the set for the second episode of _The Other Side_ , and though the reigns on him had been loosened somewhat, the bit was still in his mouth and he could not stray far into his own ideas without the hairs along Jamison's arm stirring. Emery passed along the length of one of the train-cars. The production was in possession of these two cars for several more hours, but the amount of time they had with the cars was already half-depleted. The day was wearing on and they hadn't yet set up the interiors. Soon, the cars were to be craned onto flatbeds and taken to the other side of the studio for a film being made. If Emery and Sol couldn't get the scenes shot in the next three hours, they'd have to wait three days to try again, or pay much to shoot on the real thing down at a trainyard.

Chad Holt, the focus puller, dropped his cigarette on the concrete beside the train and snuffed it with a twist. He began toward the craft service table when Emery intercepted him.

"Chad, you find a set of keys today?"

"What kind?"

"Does it matter? Any keys."

"No, but I'll help you look if you need 'em. Set keys?"

"No, personal. My car and house. You don't need to drop what you're doing; it's just that I can't find them and I'm supposed to go meet my wife and girls downtown for lunch."

"Sorry, Em. You need a lift then?"

"No, not that. Well maybe... I'll get back to you on that. And thank you. Right now I just want to find my damn keys."

"Sure."

The set was busy with footfalls and the dragging about of moods. It was a mess in the process of being made to work, of being made fit, and Bob Keith, the episode's director, was setting up in the lead train car with the cameraman, Clint Redding. Emery approached the car and stepped around several sundry boxes of electrical gear. The Sun was out, but the approaching cloud cover was en route, and the production was hoping for those clouds to block out as much sunlight as possible. The scene was supposed to take place in the evening, not under the bright-light Sun.

Beside Bob, in the car, stood actor Hal Whitcomb, a friendly sort of man that Emery had learned also wrote, from time to time. The actor could be finicky at times, but once the camera began to roll, he was a professional and never missed a line. He had a theater history. Whitcomb was being attended to by Anna Garrison, who served as both cosmetic make-up artist and hairdresser. Anna was also proving to be a useful go-between for Whitcomb and production staff, as the actor had taken a strong liking to her. Between Emery and these four people were two grips, Nate and Ray. Only Jamison knew their full names, as they were both highly informal and prone to cracking wise, especially regarding Bob, who they had worked with in the past. At that point, Nate and Ray were trying to figure out how to remove several seats (these having a concealed fixture of bolts difficult to reach) from the train without damaging them, to make room for Bill's cameras. At that moment, Rod Michaels was outside resetting the two cameras on thick spring-mounts, so the cameras could jostle a bit and simulate the motions of a moving train.

Production was gearing up for the shots involving Whitcomb's character and the conductor. These particular characters, protagonist and, for the most part, an idle antagonist or guide, were integral to the episode, and much of the story pivoted on their interactions. The man contracted to play the conductor was D.B. Scott, though Mr. Scott happened to have been delayed at the Dallas Airport and was not present. It was hoped that, with aid from the Fates, the episode's conductor was on a plane en route to Hollywood at just that moment.

Emery squeezed past the two grips.

"You guys find a set of car keys, by chance?"

"No, not that I'm aware," Nate responded, "You see a crescent wrench by the stairs when you were climbing up?"

"I don't know. I wasn't looking."

The recurring scenes between wise conductor and overly-confident passenger were to compel much of the information behind the episode's assumption, which was that, ultimately, paradise had a steep price. The premise of the story was that there was a secret stop, in Oregon, that the train made, but only just after midnight. The hitch was that a person could only get this destination marked on a ticket, causing the train to reach the hidden stop, if the person _knew_ the place by name, and before boarding the train. The passenger had to be in on the secret. This was a coveted secret that passed hands in the business world, shared only by those most loyal and trusting of one another. It was a great gift to be told of the secret stop and given its name. The train reached this destination only after all of its normal passengers disembarked during the supposed end of the line. If one was aware, and had their ticket marked, they could stay on for the hidden stop. This secret place was somewhat of a hedonist paradise, and much coveted. The protagonist had expended much money and used quite a few favors to have his ticket marked for the trip. He was consumed with reaching the place.

Emery made it past the grips and joined into the group of four near the forward end of the train car. Whitcomb was holding quite still as Anna dobbed his concealer on and examined his features a bit more. Emery nearly tripped over her case of materials as he approached.

"Good, he's here. Hey Em, we got a problem with the window latch," Bob, the director said.

"What's the trouble?" Emery replied. Bob thumbed toward Whitcomb.

"We've got him sliding the window open in act two, sticking his hand out to feel the snow, right?"

"Sure."

"But this sort of train doesn't have windows that slide open, is the thing. They pivot inward, and there isn't enough room for him to get a hand out. We could maybe rig something up, but we just don't have the time."

"I see, no."

Bob erupted in a deep cough then, turning his head and squinting through it.

"God, this flu."

"Still got ya?"

"Parts of me. Anyway, with the window, it's gonna have to be on you to fix it."

"Okay, I'll come up with something and write it out. This train has hooks for pull-down shades, so I can maybe do something with those. I'll have it to you shortly. Get yourself some cough medicine, Bob."

"I've had a gallon of that shit, this week. I'm here, though. With screwy windows."

"Yeah, I'll figure it out. Maybe he opens a shade to see the snow. Closes it to sleep. Maybe sees a shadow across them. Something," Emery thought aloud.

"That'll work. Sooner the better, though."

"The little things, right?" Whitcomb chimed in, trying to keep his head steady for Anna.

"Always," Emery replied, tired, "But say, speaking of little things, have either of you found a set of keys lying around? I'm supposed to go meet my family but I can't find my keys."

"What kind of car you drive?" Whitcomb asked.

"Molden Roadster."

"Oh yeah? The 5?"

"No, it's a Roadster 4," Emery said. Whitcomb pondered this a moment but was unable to respond, his thought abruptly lost after Anna had him turn his head to the side. That turning of the head, Whitcomb discovered, happened to give him an unexpected and quite-close view of her breasts, properly concealed though they were. He lost his thoughts and became quiet with the happenstance of being allowed to face them for a few moments, up close, without being thought a letch. Whitcomb's imagination became thorough; this was not the sort of predicament one wasted.

"I think Carl said something about finding some keys," Anna threw out, examining Whitcomb's hair from above, "but then again, I don't know... it feels like that was yesterday. Yeah, now that I think about it, I'm not certain that was today."

"Carl?" Emery asked, not recognizing that name.

"Second assistant," Bob interjected then, "my new guy after Ralph ran off last week. He's baby fresh."

"I didn't hear about someone getting hired yet. I thought that was-"

"I picked him, Sol cleared it," Bob said, pausing to cover his mouth as a thick cough came over him, "ugh, damn. I do hope he sticks around, though. Anyway, I figured you already knew."

"No. I'd better go find this new guy. Thanks, Anna. Does anybody know where he is?" Anna shook her head and Bob managed a shrug.

Emery made his way back through the train car and down the steps, cautious not to trip over the gaffer's wiring, which had slipped loose of the tape that was supposed to affix it out of the walking path. He passed one of the gaffers on his way toward the craft service table.

"Jake, have you seen a set of keys? Lost mine."

"Naw. I'll keep my eyes out, though," the gaffer said.

"Thanks. Hey, your tape is loose on the stairs back there. And Nate needs a wrench, if you happen to have one on-hand. Just a crescent."

The craft service table was a general watering hole and meeting place within the constant movement and collaboration of individuals. People frequented this table and made slight choices involving whatever seemed to have a lesser presence of flies. Gregory Polk, who served as the entirety of the lighting department, was standing near the table and talking with Chad Holt.

"You know where the second A.D. is? New guy named Carl?" Emery asked them, picking up a small round of bread and taking a bite. Chad shook his head. Gregory responded in the negative.

"Hey, anybody see Carl?" Chad called out then, loud over the entire set. This was agitating, as Emery could have done the same but had not felt like being a loudmouth while everyone was busy setting up the scene. No one responded.

"The new guy. Bob's second?" Chad rephrased, looking about. This drew a response.

"I think I saw that guy out front talkin' to the wardrobe lady," a voice called out from near the rear train car. This was Warren Tult, the microphone handler. He was young and on set due to a fulfilled favor for his father, Byron, who was good friends with Bernie Dozier. Warren Tult liked a ruckus, was troublesome in the way he spread gossip, and was always nit-picking others. He handled the microphone, but had it in his head he would be more some day, and so practiced being more too often for his own good. One might deduce from the way he hovered over others and kept track of things that he was an executive in disguise. He was not. He was lesser staff and had caused a few problems over the previous week. Jamison, an actual executive, was already looking for Warren's replacement, Bernie Dozier's favor be damned.

"Thanks, Warren," Emery said.

"Likes her, I'm bettin'," Gregory said then.

"Wardrobe girl? Shit, who doesn't?" Chad commented.

"Okay, thanks. You see some keys lying around, either of you?"

"Keys? No, I don't think so," Gregory said.

"I'll ask around," Chad volunteered.

"Oh, no no, don't bother."

Emery left the set and walked across the lot to where several trucks were parked. Near these were a few teamsters, a visitor or two, individuals from other productions, and a small group of various people waiting on the two open telephones, eating various tidbits they had taken from the craft service table. He located the wardrobe person, Nina Moreno, among these people. She was somewhat pinned against the side of a truck by the way a tall man stood before her. He was imposing and in a constant lean toward her. This must have been Carl, and the man was most certainly attempting to make time with her. Their heads were near enough to try a kiss, and the look on his face was as if this was about to occur. She appeared pestered, yet not unreceptive.

"Carl?" Emery inquired. The man turned his head and, seeing Emery's approach, tilted his chin up in greeting.

"Mr. Asher, right? Shoot's comin' along nice, I think. Everything in order?"

"Never. And you can just call me Emery or Em; we're not soldiers here. Listen, someone said you found a set of keys?"

"Yeah, on the floor in the john. Yours?" he asked, reaching into his pocket.

"Let's hope."

Carl drew the keys from his pocket and Emery sighed in relief. He had been looking for nearly twenty minutes and Beth would already be at the restaurant waiting with the girls. He did not like when work intervened with his family time, especially in those rare instances when his own ill luck caused the interference.

"Ho ho, thank you. I've been looking all over," Emery said.

"We could have a drop-box or somethin'. Like if anybody finds keys or a wallet or somethin', they put it in the box so everything's all there."

"That's not a bad idea," Emery said.

"Lost and found. I'll make one."

"Say Carl," Emery switched, "and by the way, it's nice to meet you, but I'm wondering who it was that talked to D.B. Scott after he landed in Dallas. Did Bob do it, or did he have Frank or you do it?"

"Frank. Scott's plane is supposed to land at about three, and he should be here on the set by four."

"Damn it. That'll be more like five with how things are going. That's later than I thought. Okay, I think we can make this work. We need to get these conductor scenes out of the way while we still have a chunk of train."

"Hi Emery," Nina threw in.

"Nina. Good to see you. Listen, do me a favor, Carl, and pass that along to Jamison for me."

"Sure thing. What am I... what am I passing, exactly?"

"The time that D.B. Scott's flight lands."

"Oh sure, but I think Frank already did that."

"Okay. Do it just in case, though."

"Sure, you got it."

Emery glanced at Nina for a moment, then back at Carl.

"And uh..." Emery said, wagging a finger between the two, "not on set, all right?" Carl looked a little floundered at this and Nina gave a slight chuckle.

"But," Emery said to Nina, "here's some advice. If this fellow here asks you to dinner, make sure you only accept if it's just after the 15th of the month. That's right after Jamison signs the checks and most guys take a girl to a nicer place if they just got paid."

Nina raised an eyebrow at this and nodded, bemused. Carl snorted.

"Buddy, you're killin' me here. Jamison's right, Asher. You ARE too smart for your own good."

"Neh, just for his own good. And maybe yours. By the way, you got a last name?"

"Yeah, Fiedler."

"Good, that's what I'll call you that if you keep calling me by my last name."

"Right, sorry. I get it. Uh, Emery."

The restaurant was not so busy and the staff was according. Beth was relieved to see him, as were the girls; the lunch they had planned the previous week would now, though shortened, come to actual fruition. They had attempted this family time the week prior, but a sudden call from Jamison to the restaurant's telephone had caused Emery to have to exit his family lunch quickly. The previous second assistant, Ralph Morozov, had quit with a sudden relish late in the prior week, causing the re-writes he carried, and that Emery had made over the entirety of the previous week, to be lost. Emery had been forced to rush to the set and, after some searching, found his rewrites thrown in a garbage bin just off set. Apologies had been made, anger had been suppressed, Carl Fiedler had apparently been hired as Bob's new second assistant, and the show would go on. Thursday.

This week, Emery would have a dedicated, problem-free lunch with his family, one that would not face interruption. This was assured by the fact that Emery had misled Sol Jamison and Bob Keith about where he was heading to eat with the small amount of time he had been granted. There would be no phone calls interrupting him.

"Well, I'd rather you be a little late and stick around than what happened last week," Beth said, "You'll just have to find a way to keep better track of your keys." Rebecca and Vivian sat at the table as well, each antsy and wanting to move about.

"I should wear them around my neck, is what I should do," the husband conceded.

"Just make another spare set."

"Agreed. I'll do that Sunday."

"So how is it over there?" she asked, setting her cola back on the table, out of reach of Vivian, who had several times made an ambit for it. The newest Asher was approaching her toddler-hood and had entered into that common phase of seeking to grab and jostle everything within grasp.

"Good. Busy. Bob has the flu but he's a trooper. Hope I don't get it."

"Oh, please don't. That's the last thing you need. Or me," Beth said.

"I know. How was school?" he asked, turning his attention to Rebecca.

"Fun," the little girl responded.

"Yeah? What did you do?"

"I don't know."

"You don't, huh? Did you play?"

"No."

"No?"

A smile of trickery crept across her face and her eyes grew fluorescent.

"Yes," she said then, following with a giggle.

Emery fought down the urge to get out his manuscript and add a note or two. He suddenly wanted to add in the giggle of a little girl for the final act when the main character gets off the train and finds himself in his own private utopia. A little girl being there, giving a giggle, would have a nice effect and a slightly upsetting feel to it. A touch ominous, but pure. Better yet, a little girl the main character has seen on the train during his long commutes, but who never speaks, and only looks at him at times as if entreating him to like her. There was something to that... something to add into the climax a bit. The little girl would be like a ghostly shepherd to that hidden world only reached by a chosen, tenacious few. Something come to get him. Lure him. More likely, this detail would find its way into a different script. Yes, it would be better to save it for later than to try shoe-horning it in during production. Emery thought this over and promised himself not to forget it. He kept his manuscript in his briefcase, tried to clear his head and enjoy lunch away from the particular sort of grind he had created. This was family time. He had promised.

"Your brother called this morning," Beth said.

"Did he? What about?"

"Just to talk to Rebecca. Say hello. He had the day off."

"That was sweet of him," Emery noted.

"I think he's feeling the kid bug," she mused.

"I certainly hope so. Will would be a good father, I think. And I know Helen wants children."

"Her sister, Vera, has five already. And four of them are boys."

"Five kids... can you imagine? Too much to handle. Especially with boys. At any rate, I suspect Helen is being very patient with my brother."

"More grandkids would make your mother quite happy, too."

"Undeniably."

Beth then bent from her chair and reached into her purse, which rested on the floor. After a moment in which Emery cautiously watched Vivian tug at the tablecloth, to no avail, Beth rose in her chair again and handed him a newspaper clipping.

"You did bring it, thank you!" he said.

"Mmm hmm. It's a good review."

"And you cut it out, even."

Emery leaned back in his chair and began to read the clipping. Through the course of the five short paragraphs before him, his eyes lifted and the crow's feet at their edges faded into a smoothness only attained by the brief surges of relief one might find in much-craved praise. He grunted at one point and his mouth drew into a sideways smirk. Then he gave a slight nod.

"Well, I don't quite feel like a 'product of great skill who's undoubtable narrative in television is an intelligent act in an otherwise drab circus', but I'll take it," he said, folding the clipping and placing it in his breast pocket.

"I thought you'd like that," Beth said with a smile.

"So will Bob. They called him a 'worker of the dark'. He'll fall in love with that line. Thank you, hon. When Dozier mentioned the review on set, he only said I needed to see it. Made me uneasy. Part of me thought it would turn out to be a screed."

The discussion swiveled into orders at the arrival of their waitress, and neither husband nor wife went cheap. The waitress suggested a child's cup for Vivian, and both parents were impressed that the restaurant, somewhat upscale, would have these on hand. Lunch was designed for their relaxation, after all, and the world was providing them with the opportunity to be themselves without dawdling over the details of their meals and preparing the little one's space to avoid a large mess.

"So, have you given any thought to the 20th?" Beth asked once the orders were made. He smiled at this. He had given much thought to that day, which would arrive in three weeks. Their eighth wedding anniversary. This was not as spectacular in tradition as the tenth, twentieth, and so forth. The public tradition gave those anniversaries special names and symbols. The eighth was still two years away from the first of these novelties, but the upcoming anniversary _was_ unique in that they were now in Los Angeles, they had money, the girls were healthy, Rebecca was in a good school, and all had been set in motion for the future. It was the first wholly secure anniversary they had known. Emery had thought it over much, and come up with several ideas for the anniversary. The most prominent in his mind was not the first he spoke however; this utterance was based on another form of celebration entirely.

"Well, I have heard there is a book that outlines many varied acts one might describe as _intimate_ , and that have been constituted illegal in many of the more conservative states in this great country. I suggest you and I get good and soused, and then make an attempt at them all."

Beth's eyes widened and she glanced at Rebecca, who seemed to be focused on her meal and not listening, or at the least, not comprehending.

"Husband!" she said in a hushed voice, looking about for possible eavesdroppers. Emery leaned back and enjoyed the quiet restaurant for a moment.

"You're rather stunning when you're shocked, you know."

"We're in public," she said with a frown.

"We won't be later tonight. Once all good children have closed their eyes, we'll be quite exclusive."

Beth waved her hand at him with a frown and lowered brows, omening him to cease his cozier approaches while out in the world of wait-staff, menus, and children.

"Voila. Now that I've got that off my mind and foreshadowed the wondrous things the evening might have in store," he said, "I'll admit I _have_ given a lot of thought to the anniversary, and I have an idea I think you might like."

"Cleanly, please." He gave a small laugh.

"I'm thinking about a trip."

"Oh?" Her interest in this seemed small, and he faltered a moment.

"Eh... well, we pack up the kids and get out of Hollywood and all this rush for a few days. All of us, as a family."

"I think I'd like that. Might be fun. Where do you have in mind?"

"I know you've always wanted to go, and well, we're out on this side of the country now, and it could be a lot of fun... so I thought maybe we'd take the drive to the Grand Canyon." Beth alighted at this and her shoulders lost a touch of their rigidity. She had wanted to see the landmark ever since taking the geology courses she had aced in college. Emery knew this, of course, but his thoughts on the Grand Canyon had been augmented the year prior, when a two passenger planes had collided over the canyon, a tragedy that became a large and heartfelt story in the news. Those passengers that had survived the collision and resulting fiery explosion in the sky found their end eighteen long seconds later, when the poor citizens struck the canyon floor.

Having been a paratrooper in the Pacific, Emery couldn't help but imagine that fall. Those thrown clear of the explosion would have been deafened. What followed for them had been a horrifying, utterly silent plummet through the clouds and then toward one of the most beautiful things the Earth had ever created. And then into the canyon. All the way down. It had happened in the morning, in June, a time when everything, even the sky, would have felt fresh and crisp. It had happened in that time when the warm summer sunlight always fell upon and lit the world perfectly. The canyon would have been at its most vivid. To Emery, this would have been a dead terrifying, and yet somehow lovely, serene way to arrive at one's end.

"Could we? Let's do that!" she said.

"Then that's it. The Grand Canyon. I know you've wanted to go. I figure we'll drive out, spend a few days, have some fun and see the sights, then drive back. That is, if one of us doesn't fall over the edge. And we can stay in a lodge."

"I would love that. So would the girls. It's terrible about those planes, though."

"I know. They may have raised prices because of that, too. I imagine there has been a lot of journalists and visitors this last year."

"But can you get time like that away from work?"

"Not really," Emery said with a frown, "But I'll find a way. I could arrange it between shoots and I should have a few writers by then."

"Please do it, if you can. That would be so nice."

"Well, there's a young man starts next week. Lawrence Belmont. Bright kid, hired him after the interview, and he's got a script or two; knows his way, I think. Publishes in The Gentleman, too. Mostly articles, but a few stories."

"I don't like that magazine."

"I know, but the photographs are just one part of it. There are good writers in The Gentleman, and the fiction editor can really stand on the knife's edge. Anyway, Larry will be a great help. He's only been around a little, but he's done it in a lot of the right places. He said he wrote a few for scripts Oboler, one for that Mitz character, and I know he has a book of short stories out. He's been working on _The Detective Files_ for the last few months, but he's more apt for what we're doing. I could give him a shot at an episode early, see how it pans out. Pick a story that I know would fly and have him pull a conversion, maybe. This would give me a little extra time off."

"Good. You're gone most of the time."

"It's unending. Having other writers will change quite a bit for me, and the sooner, the better. I have to be careful, and I have to get to know Larry, first, but I think it could work out, and if he's responsible, you and I could use that as a chance to get away for the trip. You realize there _is_ the chance I might wind up affixed to a telephone a few hours here and there while we're gone? In fact, more than a chance; it's assured."

"Well," she said, thinking this over, "I suppose I can accept that, if it needs be."

"Great. I'll book us a room and talk to Jamison about the time away, get Belmont set up and move things along. Jamison will say no, but there are ways around what Jamison says."

"I wish there were a way you could be home more often," she voiced then.

"Writers. That's all. I'll have a staff of them, and when that happens, I'll be on set less. Maybe the same hours as a regular job. Spread out, but not too many. I'll be home more then."

"I hope so."

"It's inevitable. The pilot aired and the second episode airs Friday. We have the third through sixth episodes shot and cut, working on the seventh and tenth at the same damn time because of near identical locations and sets... we're just about ahead enough that I can take time off. Regular time off. Scheduled. I'll be with you more then, that's a promise."

This had been promised before; more time together. It had never happened however, and the promise, made every few months, was always hinged on more than Emery's simple want, or an adjustment of his work schedule. He _had_ been able, before moving to Los Angeles, to compound his work into three-day-long jaunts to New York. He had missed her terribly during those spans, but would then return home and have several days (even a week or two, at times) to be with his family and work on his manuscripts. He was available during this time home, mostly, but now that they had relocated and he was riding the saddle of an anthology program all his own, he was gone most of the day and night, every day and night. He might attempt to adjust his work schedule, gain more time with his family, but Beth knew better; he would try, yes, but it was more likely that his work schedule would adjust _him_ , as had happened before.

Emery glanced at his napkin, the blank white, felt the need of the pen in his pocket. He could jot down a quick note. The windows on the train wouldn't open, but he could use the shades. A scene presented itself in his mind. He thought of where in the script he could place it. Second act, just before the conductor returns. Emery then swallowed and lifted his gaze from the napkin; put the script of his mind. He made himself present.

"The girls need you, too. Not just me," Beth said, trying not to sound pushy, but needing to make certain he understood. He was beginning to seem annoyed with the conversation, however. As was his habit, he then swiveled into a more light-hearted mood. Beth's husband never changed a subject when annoyed. He preferred to start dancing around in it and acting the fool.

"I know. I'll be home more soon. I can assure it. And listen to me: This is my assurance tone. I've practiced it, and I'm using it right now. Do you feel assured? Because my appearance is exuding authority and I think I sound like I'm really assuring."

"It doesn't sound that way, no. It sound's emphatic," she said.

"Really? I didn't know I was using my emphatic tone. I've been working on that one for awhile, but it's not ready yet. I thought I turned it off when I left work."

She drifted off in thought then, behind a slight and noticeably fake smile. His guilt rose. She did not believe him when he promised to be home more. He wanted to be a more usual father and husband, of course, and she no doubt saw this, but Emery was quite shackled to _The Other Side_ , and for necessary reasons. He could see this and began to wonder if he was falling into the hole of being a bad husband, and worse, a bad father. He did not feel this to be the case, but he had a mistress named _The Other Side_ , and she was a demanding, tantrum-throwing, all-consuming creature that wanted a lay at every turn of a clock's long arm. He needed writers, and quickly.

Belmont would help, if he worked out as well as Emery suspected he would, but there would have to be more. Perhaps the most shame Emery felt was not due to the neglect his family was undergoing, but that he knew he was neglecting them and continued, that he saw them drifting back from his mind a bit with each day, and had run out of ways to apologize. Beth lifted her head then, giving him that look of acceptance, of compromise. This look reached into him expertly and had done so many times before. Beth was so giving. This turned the potentiometer of his guilt up to ten.

"The Grand Canyon," she mused then, "How many miles away is it?"

"I have no idea," Emery conceded, "but I'm hoping it'll feel like a million."

Dear William,

These are the wine and cheese days, you. Or else the bourbon and Twinkie days. No matter. The same. I'm wasting mine on directed print, I suppose. I have been forbidden from working while on vacation (you'll remember I told you we were going to the Grand Canyon), and now that the Asher brood has arrived at the edge of its dire heights, and seen them more than the once, I am listless. Empress Beth has allowed me to write a letter, if I deem that I absolutely must. Alone for the moment in our hotel room (Beth is having a swim in the pool and the girls are watching the television), I have to hit a few keys. Keeping my hands away from these keys feels uneconomical and I grow bored with ease. You know me; I can't sit about.

Well, you'll be pleased to know that my body is devolving into ape-hood while my understanding of the more usual world has solidified into cold, bronze oarlocks. I row forth with a damp brow. Yes, it should please you that I have contracted the middle-aged twitches and no longer feel to be the scamp out to tease you. Things have never made more sense to me, and yet I have never been so disturbed by other people. Even when I spent time sleeping in the car alongside the highway between New York and home, I had a belief that most people could be counted on to not let things go too far down the troublesome routes, that they thought greatly for themselves and others, and when applicable, acted somewhat on those thoughts. I know better now. They'll clutch onto the saddles and ride their horses straight into the cold sea if someone with an expensive opinion tells them the grass is greenest there. They fall for things. And stupid things. And bicker over those things with an irascibility I can barely comprehend. I do it too, but I don't feel any of it. Not really. Therefore, I don't understand it.

Beyond this, in all honesty, things are fine. It is not much with wine my cup is stained, but in an abundance of middle-aged gravy. I age badly (though my knee is still top-notch), and I miss the presence of my earlier energy. Your little brother finds himself regressing into sharp, unpleasant moods. At times, I feel like I have evolved into a titanic fake, though I can dismiss this once it has run a day's course. Favorable reviews help. More and more, I have the nagging sense that I've prepared a good series of creative lectures on important things, but the lecture hall is empty because the audience would rather hear the same boy-howdy rubbish I dreaded in radio. I suppose I feel as if I'm suited-up for no reason. Do you feel this way, at times? If I take these lectures back to New York, to the beginning, the street, as it were (it is anything but), I might get a few people to listen for a moment, but the name-calling would invariably begin, and rather than being entirely dismissed, I'd be made fun of and THEN dismissed. I fear the world is not saving its cruelty and vehemence for the bad reviews anymore, but more and more beginning to bring the behavior of critics and untoward commenting to real life. The things people will say to one another out here, nearly without tact, are striking and cold. Some of these Hollywood people... If they're not powdering your face, they're pissing on it.

Tomorrow, older brother, the city may be overrun with unemployed hippos, and yet there are still small grains of hope about, stored in glass shakers that can easily be jiggled atop one's more daily meal. I am mixing my metaphors. Let me be simple: Yes, I am remaining hopeful that the pointlessness of what you and I do will at last pointlessly reach more ears and eyes. You in the journals and news rags, me in the flicker of cathode rays. I not-so-long-ago relinquished my expectations of the medium, which is of sound reasoning to me. I wonder if you have done the same. You do seem more relaxed of late.

Accepting the tough-love of television might keep me from feeling let down, or, not as discouraged as I have lately been. I am sure you hold a similar conviction on the matter with the newspapers. I should not expect the thing that pays me to change much. That is seldom the behavior of those who pay for art. The arrangement operates on feedback, but seldom creates the useful sort. The unfortunate nature of trade in which I am now local, however, is that most others do not relinquish their notions of what is good and what is bad, and hold the expectation of awards and money over all. I have awards and money, for now, but it is a constant dog-fight. I would rather be gauged on what I can do, rather than what hired others say of it in passing.

The elementary nature of it is that the critics hobble over the audience. The more the public seems fond of the show, the harder the critics look for flaw. Due to pronounced readership, critics preside over my work in the manner of judgement. Most of them cannot write. There are those who do believe that if you are not accepted by throngs, you are bad at your trade. There are others, equally damaging (and generally wearing those dark berets we've been seeing about), that have convinced themselves, and their lessers, that all beings are of great talent and anyone with the gumption to sit at a typewriter can compose a great work with little sweat. Both of these mindsets are damaging and wholly untrue. There are geniuses whose very tongues light afire when they spit themselves through a script, and there are bubbling sods that when given a blank page only shit through their hands, holding their skill with a sickening, novice reverence. These two extremes have much power over the press and Hollywood. It is productivity funneled into a market. You're supposed to pick a side, somehow, to go spineless into success or proudly into failure. You're to be soul-less or miscarried, and you have to pick one.

The reviewers are worse than the critics, however, for they lack a knowledge of the medium, or even good writing, and sway almost as many people as the critics. At least reviewers, for what little it's worth, wait to nip at you until you're done with your work. They hold for an episode and, once they have received it, judge your show thus far. The critics watch the first act of a single episode and then use it to judge your entire career. Perhaps you have little interest in these exploitative facets of Los Angeles. I can't help but describe them to you. They are on my mind with such frequency and get hold of me so expertly that one might call them perpetual. The noise does not stop at mere review or criticism, but is far more pestilent in nature, and I know you enjoy hearing about these things.

The executives, in their self-generated aplomb, are even more troubling. They are a calculating and deceitful lot, but they own the plantation, you see. These simpering, rectal pumps, who know little about actual writing, have somehow, in recent years, usurped the position of collectively deciding what is good and what is not in the script world. The critics sway it, the reviewers muddy it, but the executives do the actual deciding. They eat and fuck in this power religiously, and I meet a new one to the day. Knowing these egotistical yes-men and show-brokers is more troubling than most of the struggles I have encountered in this trade. They make me greatly disinterested in my fellow man, the more each week. In short, they are making me more like them. I've mentioned Jamison to you in the past. My troubles with that man know no end.

Let me return to my present location: We have arrived at the Grand Canyon, and I will say that the word 'majesty' (which my so high school geography teacher, Mrs. Heinemann, a woman you'll likely remember quite well, kept repeating) is indeed the most apt term. Stunning. Deep. Majestic. I keep thinking about the plane collision that happened in the skies here only last year. What a terrible mess. Even thinking about it gives me a sense of strong dread. The shops and tourism board here are still trying to recover from it. Beth gets annoyed when I ask around about the tragedy, so I have learned to inquire in quiet, sating my untoward curiosity with the shop-owners and hotel clerks when my wife is more than several feet away. I don't wish to arouse her frown. It is a potent one, and I have learned to keep it at bay, certain days. I can't help but want to know more about the plane collision, however. Planes don't collide in the air over national treasures every day, brother, and how could a person not want to know more about that?

The canyon. Here we have a hole in the Earth, or really a channel, but a vast and soul-reaching one, and rather than having been blasted into the floor by meteor or man, it has simply resulted from water. Looking down into its maw, one finds it nearly silly that it stops where it does. 5,000 feet from your head to the bottom, and yet it seems as if it could simply drop forever, all the way to the other half of the world. There is no joy in tossing a nickel from the top (Beth was upset at my childishness), as you will never hear it strike or see it bounce so far below. You simply banish the coin into non-existence. What is it about great heights, or else great depths, that make men so gleeful? Is it the prospect of obvious death? Is it imagining the plummet from the top to the ground, how long it might take, what you might strike on the way down? Perhaps yes, for me. Beth's first spoken thoughts, while we stood at the edge of this magnificent thing, were on color and tranquility: "It's like another planet, isn't it? So brown and orange and sunlit. So peaceful." My first spoken line was "Can you imagine falling right over this edge? Look at the outcroppings! You'd have your head smashed to bits long before you ever reached the bottom." Boys and girls, as they say.

We've slept out the first night, and are soon heading out to breakfast. I had another of my ill dreams last night, come to visit me from the war. I woke up in a screech. I'm used to them, but every now and then, I'll have a more ghastly one. I've told you about the man at the end of my bayonet. Well, it was him. He is a character that recurs only in the worst of the dreams. Last night, he was quite animated. At the least, I haven't been dreaming about the crate, lately. That one gets to me. Other than last night's dream, and my sudden, temporary boredom, the trip has been all bells and whistles. A great time, and both Rebecca and Vivian are still interested in the canyon park a full day after arriving, which surprises me.

I'll return to this letter tonight or tomorrow. It is the only writing Beth has allowed while on our vacation. I probably already told you that. A shame I didn't bring my correction fluid.

### ***

What's the story, morning glory? Do you have the kidney stones yet? I suspect you must. I hear they come for those citizens close to your old, old age. That is the price you pay for being born first, brother. All of the ailments will find you a few years before they seek me out. I do not envy your John Thomas in the coming years, but you will advise me on proper medications and the better remedies, I trust? It is your duty, and I will benefit from your discoveries. If you do not yet have the kidney stones, please try to get them soon; the more time you spend with them, the more experience you will have, and the better the advice you will be able to offer me when I finally contract that grievous ailment. I hear some bright, scientific minds have announced that kidney stones are more probable for those who spend time masturbating, but I suspect that's some shoddy science, so you may be in the clear, after all. I will not judge you your time alone at night.

We have returned from our long and adventurous day in the canyon. It is late and I can not sleep, of course. Re-reading the first part, I am noticing I made things sound somewhat tragic and lost. Please don't think this. I don't. I am still greatly interested in my fellow man, simply not my fellow executive man. They are more like beetles. There are executives who like my writing, yes, but never as much as their own ideas for how it should go, of course. They like it because they have changes in mind. In this way, little can be done. Every television writer is a vehicle for an ad out here, worse than in New York, if you can believe that. It is remarkably difficult to stave off disbelief and create a sense of earnest suspense when you have to cut to a talking, acrobat puppy advertising toilet paper. I am not exaggerating. Wait until the fifth episode airs. You will see that mischievous pup. I suppose Vivian will adore it, but she does not buy the toilet paper in our house. Anyway, it's murder. Plain murder. Most executives are avenues that want to connect to every possible street around, and yet somehow remain unique and disciplined. Our best friends out here are investors and product sales rankings. What shit.

I am embarking on a movie script when I return from the canyon (and this overwhelming Arizona heat), though my excitement for it may have me starting we leave the canyon (Beth is watching; have to be careful). Perhaps I could begin writing the script in code, hiding it within this letter. You would keep hold of it for me, wouldn't you? Yes, you're a good man, William Asher, kidney stones or no.

I am keeping somewhat hush about the script, as I don't want to devolve it through talk. It needs to have a few scenes before I can tell folks what it's up to, or I risk not writing it, like so many other stories. The story is not mine, this time around, but that of a french author I've been reading lately. It's a wonderful little book, and I want to write a film script for it, but will have to alter a few things here and there because his book did not have a movie in mind, and the locations are quite exotic. The story is a bit odd, even for me, but the Pacific Pictures people assure me I can let my imagination run when it comes to makeup and costuming, and even location, within obvious reason. The author and his publisher have given me written permission, though I have been unsuccessful in being able to talk to the author. I'd like to ask him some questions. It's a good book. I think it could be a good movie. I know he speaks English, but I just can't seem to get him on the phone.

I'm nearly finished with another Other Side script, possibly my best thus far, but we'll have to see after the director gets his hands on it. It's my 22nd script for the show, and my 12th to be accepted and dedicated to being shot. There are times, good brother, when I feel as pampered as one of H.G. Wells' unaware Eloi. I must decree that these times are quite short. I spend the majority of my hurry-to-it days pressed on all sides by the dark of the industry. I get the praise when it comes, yes, and I am recognizable due to my on-camera hosting of the show (I'm nearly free of stage-fright, finally), but when there is rejection and anger and criticism... these things go straight to me, as well. The middlemen out here take the praise when they can get it, but defer the negative remarks to the writer. There is more criticism than praise for me at this point in the life of the show. For most shoots, I feel to be less an Eloi, and more a twisted, machine-addled Morlock. A harvester of innocents.

The sad thing is that I had to set this letter aside and actually go through my briefcase just now to discover what number of script that last one was. I thought maybe somewhere in the twenties. I don't really count much anymore. It does little for one's skill. My output is strong, but I can't keep this up forever. Already, I am finding myself numb at the typewriter, which is occurring more and more this year.

My first full script for Pacific Pictures is already in their hands. They'll read it sometime in the next week or so, if they haven't already. I'm very nervous. The story is disturbing and I could have gone too far. Hollywood seems to enjoy my sort of written drama and the use of moral and speculation in my newer stories, but I didn't give them much of that this time around. It's quite dark and is based on the war. Things went awry there, of course. I don't need to tell you. I very much wanted to capture some of those things to show the newer generation. How awful men can be, and were. Again, I'm nervous. Much of the story is about starvation. I'm trying not to think about what will happen if Pacific Pictures responds with "Mr. Asher, we can tell you spent a lot of time on it, but no one will ever film something like this." It happened to Chayefsky, even after winning his Academy Award. This is always a plausible response when you try to do something staunchly human.

I'm feeling a bit tired now, so I'll try to sleep. I realize now that I am writing to a fictitious version of you, one that wants to hear all my gripes. When I return to this letter, which will eventually make its way across the country to the actual you, I'll be better in mood. Insomnia is a terrible bitch, you know. I used to loathe her, but now I somewhat rely on her. We are companions, most nights. You are lucky she has never climbed into bed with you.

I will admit however, that my best work leaves my fingers in the wee hours.

### ***

Late morning. The Sun is sinister here. We're on our third day of it, and today is the actual date of the anniversary. Beth woke in a grim mood this morning, but after showering, she is now somewhat giddy. We've got a nice day planned, and Rebecca is ecstatic to see more of 'summer', which she seems to think has occurred. Though we are months from summer, this drive to Arizona has peaked her interest in the seasons, and she is curious as to how we simply skipped the spring. I want to explain what has happened, what with weather and time zones and region, and it might serve as a good time to introduce her to an idea about the Earth's tightly-cinched belt, the equator, but her innocence is so adorable that I'm going to let her keep her view of things until the drive back, then perhaps make a game of spotting different phases of habitat. You know: Desert, scrub, then brush, trees, civilization again. The whole way back, if she's game.

The Los Angeles Times asked to interview me last week, and I fulfilled it. This happened very quickly. They called and the following day I gave an interview. It could hit the streets at any point this week. As with this letter, I rambled on for far too long. I don't care much about that, however. No one has to read it. I'm long-winded. More feed for the bag. There were a few pinpoint questions, directly about me or one of my scripts, but mainly, the questions were broad and asked things in the vein of "Tell us about what and why you write, and your influences," and "What do you think about the live drama shows in New York versus the pre-shot drama shows in Hollywood?" Come now, that is my bread and butter, and the field I know too well. How can I answer those questions without saying what I actually think? What I actually think runs much longer than a sentence or two. People who read newspapers are typically adults, and adults can handle a little long-windedness from time to time. I am certain you disagree however. Your work in the journalistic art necessitates brevity, of course.

I don't know how truncated the interview will be when it goes out, if it's not out already (haven't made it to the shops yet, today). The Times might chop the interview to pieces with the journalist cleaver. I hope they refrain from doing that, though I know there are constraints to how much space they can give an interview. The strangest thing about having an "image" in this business is that I, myself, am the one person who doesn't get to create my image. An image is created by others, minced up, augmented, and branches out in complete disorder. It's funny, I'm the person to whom my image is attached, but I have no real say in it, even though it is supposed to represent me. A strange thing, when you think about it.

Beyond the world of teleplays, I've been trying to get more time with Beth and the girls (this letter would seem to indicate the opposite, but this is a temporary vice, and you know how quickly I can type). The four nights before this vacation, I managed to make it home before nine. It's hard work, but I nearly have to beg for this time away from the studio. The executive producer, Jamison, doesn't see eye-to-eye with me at all, but he does have a penchant for family, has a few nieces by marriage who he somewhat adores, so I am rewarded in that way when we get along. If I don't push him too much, I get more time with Beth and the girls. It's sinister, but I can somewhat rely on this facet of him. Beth seems pleased with my being home, but only at night. By morning, she is grumpy and upset, watching as I head back to the grinder. She has lately been a nudge moody and quiet. I thought perhaps there was a pregnancy, but was incorrect. It was foolish to assume my wife's ill mood must have been due to her body, and not my constant absence. She is most assuredly upset with me, but the quiet sort, which crams me with guilt. I'm not going to try to find the underlying details of it however. I've learned better; this is most likely a matter of the television schedule, and it will take her time to better accustom to it. Television shows do not last more than a few years, and therefore, I have precious little time to flesh this one out and work within it. The time I am granted with The Other Side is a span in which I have necessarily nil to give up. I need all of it.

I am not in control of a production's length, degree, or whether anything will function in the way it is designed. I can plan, but most of what a producer does on set is repair and smooth-over trouble, find alternate routes to a particular solution, and answer endless questions while trying to think ahead as much as possible. A head producer has to do it quick. Sol gets it worse than I do; he has to answer the money and staff troubles. I end up with more of the on-set problems. For both of us, the currency by which all our decisions and transactions take place is problematic: The currency is strain, and its value is degraded over time. You expend stress to limit time, or expend time to limit stress. A constant balance that tips either way with little notice, and others can affect it without your knowing. Beth has much time, and wishes only that I could be more a part of it. I've been trying to push various hobbies on her, having little else I can do. I am supportive of her to the point she can get frustrated, so I have to cool my motor at times and simply accept that she can be a touch bitchy. She has earned the right to be so, and these last few weeks are one of those times when I weather that particular sort of quiet storm. I do deserve her frustrations, of course.

This show will not last forever, and once it's gone, we'll be thankful that we got as much from it as we could while the production lasted. That's the truth, and I have to keep moving while it lasts, set this branch of the Asher family up for the future, when work may not be so readily available.

More later.

### ***

Nightfall now. The girls are playing in our hotel room behind me. My legs are sore from the hike. We did not make it to the bottom of the canyon, as carrying Vivian was somewhat of a torture by the quarter mark, and Rebecca is not yet suited for such long walks, much less a descent into something of that depth. The canyon is magnificent, but I've learned I am not suited for that sort of descent, either. The hike was fun, at most points, and the soreness we all feel is appropriate and somewhat enlightening. I could barely breathe when we reached the top again. Smoking takes its toll, as do Beth's eyes when she sees me lighting up while making our way up the trail. Men are foolish, brother. Being winded makes me want to smoke. How ugly. You're the same way, I remember. You'll be pleased to know I have cut back somewhat and will continue to do so, a few less each week until I am at an acceptable number. Maybe a pack a week?

Beth has made a run to the local market for various goods and taken the girls with her to pick out treats. We have just returned from a lovely dinner, a true anniversary dinner, and despite the girls, this was still romantic and meaningful beyond having to parent throughout the meal. Both of the girls were so well-behaved. I wonder if Beth said something to them prior. They'll be back soon, and put to bed. Then Beth and I can have a more relaxing and lovely time with one another.

I heard about your nomination for the Woollcott Award. It's a shame you did not win it. Always the bridesmaid, eh? I'm sorry to hear you were dodged. I was hoping for a different turnout, of course. You work hard and you've earned the right to some recognition beyond your family, your editors, and the various staff-writers by which you are respected. That you're continually nominated each year does mean something good. I'm sure you're already aware of that. I know you don't put much stock in prizes, and I feel somewhat the same way, but being nominated for things sort of puts you in the position of having to care, or else seeming unthankful. It's a conundrum mainly built by other people and set up around you, but I think you handle it fine. Prizes and awards are sort of like the notion of image I wrote a few pages back. I don't see how anyone could not feel your articles worthy of award, however. Your talent has always been so impressive. I mean that. I couldn't write in the journalism world to save my life, and with daily articles... your schedule is just as busy as mine, though the difference is that mine doesn't have to be that busy, I simply make it that way. You're busy by demand. That must be a strain, at times. I'll be honest: Your articles could only be more fetching if you drew bare breasts over the text.

My new writer, Larry Belmont, is sparks on a page. I hired him on two weeks ago and he's a good kid; knows his way around a scene. You might be aware of him, as he writes for The Gentleman. Sailing articles, mostly. I suspect you're the sort to have a subscription, brother, though most likely sent to your office, hmm?

Larry's skill is quite honed for his age and he works fast. I had to drudge through radio and some of early television's awful programming, those marshier ends to scripts, to train myself on how to do what I do, but these youngsters are jumping into the mix right from the start, going straight for television, and they make swift understudies. I'm somewhat ancient to them, despite my young age. Belmont's first script is being shot as I type this, and unless something goes badly, we will air it in just over a month. It is a dark and rather frightening story called "Dare, Sweet Eleanor". His work is far more disturbing than mine, so far, and he has a penchant for horror, but reining him into the show is not difficult, and he takes to the Other Side waters like an Olympian. Based on a test audience viewing of that episode, he has already been contacted with an offer to write a feature script with Pacific. He's off to a fast start in this business and I'm a touch enamored with watching his name build.

Belmont and I have been talking much lately over prospective script ideas, and I feel close to him. His wife, who shares with your wife the name Helen, is a bit stand-offish, but gets along well enough for a few hours at a time, and Beth is quite fond of her. They came over for cocktails last week, and I think we're going to make a weekly event of it. The Belmonts are good company and we like them. I need to warm up to the Mrs., but she does seem cordial. There is a good chance she dislikes me inherently, for being a part of the show that lately takes all of her husband's time, just as it takes up my own. Larry could be the first true friend I've made out here. I'll have to wait and see, but I could really use a few friends.

Interesting. I'm just now realizing he could possibly become the first friend I've made since leaving WKCR, not simply moving to Los Angeles. Well, that's a bit sad. I should remedy that problem. I'd like more friends, I think. If you have ever wondered why I write you such long, confessional letters, think about what I've just said, about having friends. I promise to leave you alone once I get a few of those. I do wish there were a way to live closer to you and closer to mother. I don't know when I'll get to see her next. At least I know that you and I will get to spend time together in the summer, at the lake. Perhaps I should try to arrange a way for mother to come with us this year? It would be expensive, but I'd be willing to arrange it, if she is interested. Wouldn't that be fun? I don't think she's been back to Cayuga since we were kids. Say, what does Helen think of mother? I don't think I've ever asked.

At any rate, it's fun talking over stories with Larry, and I'm looking forward to settling my writing team. I need one more writer, possibly two. Soon enough. Of course, having someone that talented beside me is also somewhat daunting. I've run out of ways to say "good job" to Larry, and while I'm exceedingly proud of him, I'd be fooling myself if I were to think there wasn't a smidge of jealousy in me over it. Not the petty sort, just in there, and easily handled. I chalk that up to the notion that I didn't know anything when I was his age, was running through the jungle in Leyte with a 10-inch bayonet, starving and getting shot at (I have since learned who made those bayonets, my brother: Utica Cutlery. Same that made the silverware we used every night for dinner, as kids. Something upsetting about that).

After I returned from duty, I mainly spent my days trying not to miss my classes, trying not to miss any errant girls, and writing bad shorts for campus radio, wishing women would notice me as much as I noticed them. That Larry's already married, and on the ball with his scripts so young (or at least a productive course, if that's your thing), and that he is so eager and driven (things I can say I very much understand) is inspiring, but definitely causes one to look in the mirror from time to time. A good kid. I'm pleased to go over his work with him and give my weird brand of critique. He thinks of me as an employer, yes, rather than his peer, but for now, a paycheck-inspired loyalty is enough. Being an employer is a role I handle well, thus far.

Of grandiose news is that I've signed Banry to script an episode, hopefully to air in the next season. Yes, Orson Banry. I can't wait to read it and I wonder what he's planning. It is an honor to get to work with a writer like Banry, as I'm sure you well know. It was your copy of The Sounders that first introduced me to his work, so long ago. His novels have been a strong influence on me over the years. The short stories, too. I can't believe my luck! I'm quite excited. I'll get an autograph for you, if you like. Banry runs a funny little writers group out in Los Angeles, through which I met Belmont, as well.

I was sorry to hear you were ill. The flu passes at wondrous speed here on the west, and I have not been good at dodging those particular grenades of cough and hack. I was sick once due to my director, but it passed quickly. The arid climate down here seems to dilute the seasonal ills and we all appear to recover with speed, with the exception of what I had last month, around the same time I first heard you were sick. It sounds as if what you contracted was quite virulent. Maybe pneumonia and they misdiagnosed? Whatever it was, I'm certain I had something similar. It ended about four weeks ago. I had a fever, a few muscle aches (which always accompany any flu I get; it's my prime symptom), and it felt like somebody kicked apart my kidneys in my sleep. Of the two of us, brother, I may get the kidney stones first.

That illness was horrific, though I wasn't able to stay out of the studio. It made its way through all of us. Half of the production crew was vomiting intermittently. I felt weaker than I have in years. Moving around the sets required a bit of concentration, which was very new to me. There was one particular night I was frightened to go to sleep. I worried I might not wake up. It comes on very quickly, this illness, and it vanishes just as quickly. About four days total. If you had the same thing I had, the only thing that made me feel any better (maybe just in my head) was direct sunlight. I was merely sick when walking around in the warm day, but stuck on an indoor set, in the dim... I was curling and holding my breath. I didn't drink any booze while I had it, but I did notice that drinking coffee made me not notice it as much. I could tune the kidney ache out if I was a little busy in the blood. And smoking always helps. Suppresses the symptoms, I've noticed. Of course, I was probably damaging my kidneys irrevocably in doing so, and Beth does not enjoy the tiny smoker's cough I have developed (though I suspect she does enjoy the slight gravel my voice has taken on). None of the cold or flu remedies did anything, by the way.

I'm a bit worried that Beth has not yet returned. It's been over an hour, now. Also, I am out of cigarettes and things to write in this letter. No matter. Doing this will keep my mind off not having cigarettes. Be patient with me?

Rebecca has been very understanding and caring with her little sister. They will be so close over the years; I can see it forming already. Aside from this, Rebecca is becoming exorbitantly difficult. On us, I mean. She challenges everything Beth and I say and do. At seven. Her teenage years are going to be unwieldy and torturous for me. If I tell her that the dinosaurs long ago went extinct, and no longer exist in our own time beyond fossils and alligators, and imagination, she'll tell me I'm wrong, and when I try to refute this, she'll become quite angry and wave her hand at me as if to say "Just shut up. I'm done with you," before walking out of the room, or worse, sitting near me and glowering. She has my smarts but also my stubbornness, and most certainly Beth's mother's temper. That will be much of a trial in the decades to come. She also has her mother's beautiful, boy-fetching eyes, which, now that I give it some thought, might prove to be more of a trial in the years to come than her temper. Raising her is tough, but enlightening. She's an entirely different person than Vivian, and she takes to information in a much different way. Beth and I tell her things, of course, but we are not instructors. No. We have a mild approach to teaching Rebecca things, based on the child's interests, at this point.

I'm the disciplinarian of the house, so that could be a part of the trouble. It's tough when Beth goes soft on Rebecca when I'm not around. They're getting along wondrously right now, but Rebecca tends to see her mother as water, and her father as brick, and she prefers to ignore brick. This upsets me greatly, but I know it's quite natural, and I do understand it. Maybe better than most. It is still problematic.

We received the hurricane postcard you sent from Maine. It looks fearsome. At least you and Helen weren't there when one struck. The trees break and careen through houses, I hear.

I should end this letter. It's easier on the phone. I can't hear you on a page. On paper, everything is stretched greatly and the reality of what a person thinks can be so easily distorted, or undiscovered. Perhaps that's a reason I'm so fond of it. I could have called you a few nights ago, or any night since, but I felt like writing a letter, and it is the only sort of writing Beth will let me do here. This is family time and you are included in that arrangement. No work for me. I feel as if I've signed a contract to it. I have a difficulty being myself when I go for too long without writing, however. More than a few days without getting my mind to a page, and I begin to feel very lonely. Many things simply stop making sense to me. I don't quite understand that. It's like going without a cigarette for too long, but far worse.

You're right, of course, in that phone call last month when you explained that something doesn't make it into a letter, and that they are too easily misconstrued. Text distorts the voice, you know. An element is added to text, but several human elements are taken away. I think it would be gesture; the gesture of what you mean is taken away. It's like seeing facts on paper but not quite knowing what they actually represent, in the greater whole, or gauging a co-worker merely by gossip or a passing glance. Much is lost through the broken-telephone game. The glints are gone. For some, that's heavenly.

I think that is the sound of the Roadster. Yes, definitely. Huzzah! Beth has returned to the hotel from her run to the store, and I see now that she has returned with a nice, glimmering bottle of Old Forester. This is a wonderful surprise. Happy Anniversary, indeed. The girls will be asleep soon, and I must end this letter. She says hello to you. I believe I have now addressed myself uniformly, or have typed from my head and walked within proximity of the explanation of myself. There. Nine pages of chin music. I'll likely give you a call soon. I'd like to hear how you are doing, and I don't expect you to sit down and write a novel of a letter. I'll be in touch after I've settled into the routine of the show again. Beth also would like you to say hello to Helen for her. Do the same for me, would you?

Your blathering brother and psychotherapy patient,

Em

**Chapter Sixteen**

Sitting in the collapsible chair in his makeshift, on-set office, flitting his fingers over the keys and clattering the handwritten changes of the day into the newly finalized shooting script, he was reminded of Maury Aaron. This was Emery's private Red Room, and though it was adjacent to the set, and temporary for the current episode, he felt just as distanced from the activity of a show as he had in Cincinnati, entombed in the basement of WKCR, red-lining and re-writing scripts for radio. Things took place at specific times; at that moment, Emery was the red-liner and re-writer. He would be the producer later, or tomorrow. Then the actor. Then the husband and father. Then the writer. Then the red-liner again. His active mind had never been multifarious, and he could only work in one of his modes at a time. His vision was singular until he turned his head. Right then, he was Maury Aaron. He would be Ward Cleaver, family man at home, in an hour or so.

The day's changes were tertiary, not very important, or far-reaching, but they had been made, some shot, and now they needed to be added into the functioning script. The term 'final', when referring to a script on set, was laughable. There was nothing final about it and the home stretch, for a script, only lengthened the more you ran it. The simplest things required re-writes, changes in location, re-detailing whenever a grandfather clock could not be found on schedule, or an actor couldn't say 'circumnavigate' due to simply not liking the word. A perfectionist, Emery needed to make sure any change that happened was reflected in the ongoing script. Any improvisation needed to be added into the shooting record afterward. To others, this was not so important, as it occurred after the fact, but to Emery, that record of evolution and ongoing transformation _was_ the final script.

Emery did not mind re-writing for actors. There was a certain regale to being involved with them, and while he would not concede that he could be star-struck, as the tabloids called the trait of adoring celebrity, there was a certain delicacy to being in the company of those most noticed by an entertained society. William in D.C. had met with senators, congressmen, and various political faces, and had even found himself in large rooms with presidents, two of them now, from time to time while writing his articles and being one with which other journalists might consult. William was lax in considering this a facet of his occupation, and nothing to be thought over much. Emery was more easily dazzled, though this sense of interest never lasted long.

As a writer, he led his horses hard, and fought every change to the script with a bitterness and creative dogging that was difficult to sway. With performers however, he was not so much the writer as he was a producer, and willing to better accommodate the on-air talent. These agreements did come back to haunt him later, when he was a writer again, but the alterations asked by actors tended to be dialogue-specific, and simple to change. Often, when Emery was being a producer, Larry Belmont would take the reigns of writer until Emery could return to that position. It was a good arrangement. The demands of a producer were unpredictable and constant, and he preferred, despite his trust in Belmont, to handle re-writes himself, especially if the script was his own.

If Lou Fanady felt "Mr. Gaunt, I understand you've been conducting numerous laboratory tests" to be a clunky way to say something, Emery had open ears. Minutes later, handwritten on the script would be the new line: "I've come to understand you run tests here, Mr. Gaunt, and that this place is some sort of laboratory." For one actor, this might be a mouthful of unnecessary wording, but when Fanady said it, the line had a feel. The line came out sounding how a glass of dark sauvignon might taste after an excellent meal. For each actor there was a special sort of line, and Emery was not a blockade to this function of re-writing. He considered actors to be specialists with regards the wording of dialogue, and he listened to them up until that moment they had worn out their welcome, which was rare, but did happen.

The writer's fingers moved and the page was finished, the following day's shooting script now settled and ready for the time when he would inevitably need to change it still more. All the white space of a script was mostly present to end up being filled with his hasty scratches, notes taken while walking the set and seeing the process. Reality and the page were different beasts, and reality could not often change much, but the page could. When pressure began and something had to give, the script became a malleable antagonist, ready to be defeated. He could fill a notebook each week with the things Bob Keith needed changed, but Bob was a thankful man. The director always expressed his apologies when a large-scale change was needed. Bob was a good man with a unique, visual skill, and Emery had learned to trust that skill. Many of the changes Emery made were straight from the keen eye of Bob Keith, and while some seemed unnecessary, even annoying, most alterations had a specific and relative need behind them.

The day's changes had been tedious. Larry had gone home and the remaining work belonged to Emery. There were not enough boots for the actors, so some scenes had to evolve differently and the camera couldn't show the ground of the set for almost an entire scene, as some of the actors were barefoot. Also, Norman Hogue, a veteran of the war and a capable actor, had been lightly injured on-set and had now forbidden the use of real bayonets, even dulled and taped as they had been, and this caused the pivotal action scene to be re-written. The wrong system of plants had arrived, so there were not enough fake jungle plants to sell the scene. A small tent was used instead, which in turn altered the dialogue and actions of a certain private that was supposed to begin kicking and thrashing around in the jungle plants in exasperation during a moment of anxiety while all watched. Things had changed throughout the day, and Emery's pen had caught up with it all, and now, much later, the typewriter had been fed. Clack clack. Time to go home.

"GO FUCK YOURSELF!" he heard from outside. Emery raised his head and listened for a moment. Silence. He vacated his chair and leaned his head around the partition that served as entryway to the small, makeshift writer's room. He did not need to see the man to know the voice belonged to Warren Tult. It seemed Jamison had finally gotten around to firing him, quite late in the day. Emery heard the tone of a calmer voice then, but it was soon interrupted by Tult.

"SHUT YOUR MOUTH! JUST SHUT YOUR DAMN MOUTH!"

They had worked Tult all morning and afternoon, and were now letting him go at the very end, before he was to head home for the night. A few select individuals knew of the firing in advance, and it was not much in the way of interesting news, as most present had worked on other productions in the past, and Emery himself had seen many lose their jobs in the television industry. This was all too common, and sometimes, as in Tult's termination, somewhat deserved.

"THAT SO?! YOU'RE A FUCKING SHEISTER! WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT? NOTHIN' TO SAY? YOU COCKSUCKER; I CAN'T STAND THE LOOK ON YOUR GODDAMN FACE!"

Live drama, itself, had been fired when Harold Archer stepped down as executive officer of the Television Production Association in New York. His replacement, Theo Carter, had done much to unravel the protections in place for production crews on the east coast. This caused what were deemed, in the kindest term, layoffs. The gust of writers and studio personnel this action sent into Hollywood was akin to the Donner Party's adventure into the west. Some never made it, and those that did had to compete with those already entrenched in the film industry. What need were there for New York gaffers when the motion picture industry had their thousands on hand, thousands with more training and an already present sense of the pecking order and priority? For every Warren Tult, there were a hundred others waiting for a job, some from New York, from Chicago, some from Los Angeles. You had to be thankful anymore, and keep things running smooth if you were lucky enough to have the job. And a man like Warren Tult, a man who handled a microphone, had no business meddling with others, or attempting to handle a crew.

Emery stood in the doorway of his makeshift Red Room, watching. Tult was standing near the tent on the soundstage, having expanded his chest with anger. He wore the recognizable look one exuded when about to attack another. Sol Jamison was standing near him, pointing a finger.

"All right. Fine, Warren. You want to shout, you go ahead. Scream your head off. Let's hear it."

"You're not in charge here. You're just a piece of shit who gets to hold some other guy's checkbook."

"Sure I am. You're done here, get it? That's all of it. I don't want you on this team anymore, Warren. You cause more problems than you're worth."

"You're not my boss, asshole. Asher's my boss."

"There's another mistake. I'm _his_ boss. Which makes me your boss," Sol said, plain.

"No, you're a stupid, bald asshole who thinks he runs everything, but can't do _anything_. Go back to your little office and play with yourself."

"Warren," Emery said from the partition. Both Tult and Jamison glanced over, surprised at there being a third party still around. Jamison had likely chosen this particular time because there would be fewer people around for Tult to insult or shout over.

"Asher, help me out here," Warren said, alleviated, "This monkey thinks he-"

"You've been fired, Warren. It's time to get your things and leave," Emery said.

"But that bum doesn't have the power to fire me," Tult said.

"He thinks he does," Emery replied, "And I think he does, too. And we're both firing you for being a loudmouth and troublemaker. Now get your things and get the hell off our set before you cause any more problems."

"Of all the backhanded things... I do a good job here, damn it. You're all in cahoots."

"Hiring you was a favor to Bernie Dozier, and you know that," Emery said, "but you've been shitting on that favor for months, Warren, so now you're out. Bernie is well aware of it."

There was a moment when Warren closed his mouth and lowered his shoulders, not with a look of defeat, but the appearance of mistreatment. This was the pose one adopted when refusing someone and expecting them to beat you for it, a child refusing to give in to a parent's demand and simply standing there, obstinate. This posture, however, was short lived. Emery caught a glance from Jamison that carried with it a slight nod. A thank-you, of a sort. Then Jamison's glance jerked aside as Tult fist hammered him in the mouth. At the moment this occurred, Emery began to move toward the now disgruntled and terminated microphone handler. What he would do was still undecided, but allowing Warren Tult to beat up his executive producer would not go over well with anyone. Emery had to do little, he discovered, as a loud "HEY!" came from the side of the stage and two of the teamsters jogged into view. It seemed they, too, had been watching this termination.

The two men grabbed Tult and staggered him, one quiet while the other shouted profanities of his own. A moment later, Tult was standing between them, somewhat captured and held in place. Jamison rose up again, his hand pressed to his mouth and nose, shocked.

"You want a shot at him?" one of the teamsters asked quickly, holding Tult tightly by an arm as the other teamster did the same with the opposite side, subduing the unwanted man.

"FUCKIN' SHYLOCKS! GO TO HELL!" Tult shouted to all present, trying to wrench himself from their grip. Jamison looked at the three men, and though his hand covered his mouth, the frown was quite visible in the brows. He backed up, thinking over the offer, upset.

"No, this isn't right. Just let go of him," he said, waving his hand. There was a moment of non-cooperation in this.

"Let him go," Jamison repeated, louder. They did as asked, but were reluctant. Warren Tult lurched away from them, circled a moment, and then pointed back and forth between Jamison and Emery.

"You can't do this to people. You'll get yours."

"You're done here, Warren. You're off my show," Emery said.

"You're more than that. You're done with CBS," Jamison muttered, but this did not sound a threat. The tone in the executive producer's voice was almost apologetic. Warren made a series of rude gestures as he backed out of the studio. The look he gave Emery as he exited put coals in the writer's stomach. Such anger and acid. Emery felt troubled for what had happened, but there was no ulcer coming. Tult deserved to lose his job. He was an ass, and now it seemed he was quick to become a belligerent, as well.

When all had quieted and the situation seemed to have dissolved, talk ensued.

"Guy got you pretty good. You all right?" one of the teamsters asked.

"I'm fine. That's not the first time somebody caught me with a right cross. Thanks for coming in like that," Sol replied, agitated.

"Sure, sure. Nobody likes a hot-head," the teamster replied.

FADE TO:

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FADE TO:

The dim lights of the set. A clock against the wall above the main door. The clock knew it was time to cut power and abandon the day's work. Tomorrow would come quickly, and all would start up again. The two teamsters had vacated the set and Jamison walked with Emery toward the door. Emery noted a bit of blood beneath the producer's nostrils.

"You're bleeding, Sol."

"Yeah, well." Then nothing was said.

Emery's sense of urgency had abated, small as it had been, and Jamison sighed and continually licked the inside of his upper lip. It would grow in size quite soon. They went outside and Jamison locked the door. Without any talking, Emery soon found himself in the position of needing to leave an awkward moment. The two men were near one another, a situation neither had enjoyed much since first meeting, many months prior. Worse, they were alone, at the end of a day, having just experienced a heated problem, and neither of them had anything to say. Sol finished locking up and then, with Emery about to turn and leave, Sol finally spoke.

"Listen, you want to get a beer?" Emery thought about this for a moment and then shrugged. As little as he wanted to spend time with the man who incessantly pushed him from his stories, the man who shackled Emery to artistically purblind economics, Emery felt a need to compromise, as was the nature of his relationship with the man. Solomon Jamison was a human leash to the writer, but there was a part of Emery that knew when a person was troubled beyond the scope of a stressful day or small rivalry. A person could nearly detect when another person's sweat smelled of seriousness and struggle. It was a palpable sensation.

"I could use one, sure," Emery replied. This was less an acceptance than a yielding.

The pub was near enough the studio that the two men could walk in the warm Los Angeles night and reach it in minutes. After ordering their pints, they sat and sipped and did not talk about whatever Sol had on his mind. That the bartender was a tired man and cared little for conversation was troublesome, as it meant the two producers would have to fill the air with their own; this did not seem to want to happen. Emery began getting angry at this waste of his time.

"So, how was Seattle? You and the wife," Emery asked.

"Cold and packed with drunks."

"Oh?"

"I've never seen that many bars and bums in one place."

"Not a place for my next vacation, I suppose?"

"Actually, it was good fun."

"Ah."

There was a long silence then. The two sat before their beers and Emery feigned interest in doing so. He was growing antsy. Small talk was bad enough, but an absence of even that was worse. He decided to coax what he felt was approaching.

"Tult seemed all right, at first. We wouldn't have hired him otherwise. He was one of my hires, too. Sorry."

"No, we brought him to you," Sol said with a wave, "Bernie, mostly."

"Okay sure, but I don't see that it's your fault, either."

"Hell no, that ruckus was nobody's fault but his."

"Bernie _did_ know Tult was being fired tonight, right?"

"Yeah, it's all clear. He knew."

The air stilted and talk ceased again. They each sipped their beers. Emery's boredom was a maker of compulsion.

"Say, how about those teamsters?" he came up with, "Handy to have big guys like that around."

"Oh, I could have handled Warren Tult. He's a loudmouth. I've met a million of 'em and they all run hot. Thinks he has brains, thinks he's bigger than he is. It's just an act. He's an actor. Everybody out here is. I'm just not allowed to brawl with problems like Warren Tult, is the thing. We're a diplomatic bunch, anymore. I could have torn that louse to pieces."

"Been in a few fights, huh? I have, too."

"We're both vets. And I boxed. Either one of us could have handled that idiot."

"Say, I boxed, too. In the service. Lightweight," Emery said, interested.

"Then it's settled; either one of us could have taken that fleabag's head off."

"Well, I don't know about that," Emery admitted, "It's been awhile, and my last fight was done with a bayonet, not my fists."

"Jerries?"

"Japanese."

"Ah. I know you guys in the Pacific had a rough time of it."

"Only toward the end."

"Let me ask you something, Asher. What do you remember most about the war?"

"The most?"

"Sure. Over all that happened. Which thing in which month or... just whatever you remember most. Whenever I hear people go on about it, they all gotta talk about V-day. The day they knew everything was gonna settle. You know the end of it all. That's not what I remember most, though."

"I see. You have a haunt."

"A haunt. Huh, I like that. I'm sure we all got some of those, but that's not what I mean. What I remember most isn't anything bad, just the strangeness of Europe."

"Strangeness?"

"Yeah. It didn't make sense. The streets, the hills, the people, the- the damn women and the pets and the food and... I swear, even the concrete. None of it felt right. It was all... just off, in a way. You understand?"

"I think so."

"More foreign than I would have thought. I mean, of course it was, but even the water tasted different. They're not like us over there. War or not, it was alien and... sometimes it just didn't feel like I could breathe her air. Like the shape of an American was wrong over there. You just didn't really fit and the ground didn't look right. You know what I mean by that?"

"Europe is old, has a way of doing things that our own country was built from, but we've changed over time to fit our own... well, proclivities. Our needs, I suppose. Different cultures, borders, the resources... some of that would be small, like the way the trains work, but some differences are quite large, like the way people talk, or the way a particular sort of government works, or even which place has had more blood spilled on it. Television, too. We're inundated with product commercials, but not so much in England. Over there, it's mostly commercials for other shows, is all. Things like that."

"Well, they get into wars more often. That's certain."

"I don't know; from the revolutionary war until right now, we've been in four big ones. That's in what, less than two hundred years?"

"Yeah, but three of those wars were theirs."

"That's true, I suppose. But we come from there. Maybe it's in our blood, just from having survived for so long with a greater number of countries crammed in next to each other. Here, we're only attached to Mexico and Canada. Both are somewhat friendly to us, these days. Vice versa."

"I remember fooling with a British girl, real pretty, just after the 4th got Paris back. Well, after those Africans got Paris back, mostly. But even that was different. You know, in bed."

"Huh, I see. Well, what I remember most is learning my father had passed while I was in Leyte. And then heading to Manila and thinking I was going to starve to death there, and how terrible all of that felt. Everything happened at once and I couldn't clear my head for some time."

"Sad thing about your father. That's some bad deal. You were NAVY, right?"

"No, ARMY."

"Out in the islands. Ground force?"

"Paratrooper. But then ground for awhile; demolitions. I uh, stepped on the wrong C.O's boots one too many times."

"Oh, I can picture it."

"Yeah, well, I was just about back to airborne but once we got into those trenches, we were definitely grounded."

"I hated going subterrain."

"Awful. And we got messy out there. In and out of contact. We all started getting real hungry and I was almost ready to try eating the leather from my boots. There were a few days in particular where things became... questionable. They were the bad ones. We were in a gulley, and just stuck there. In Leyte. My knee was garbage, but I could walk, so I was sent to the ditch after two weeks of morphine in a sick bed. The orders wouldn't change and the chain of command out there was barely holding together, dangerously close to falling apart. We could all feel it. I was sober again, and hungry because morphine subdues the appetite and it had worn off. I could barely think straight, and even when I _could_ clear my head, all I could think about was how hungry I was. We still had Manila to deal with, but Leyte was where things started getting ugly."

"I heard about that."

"All the resources and attention were on the NAVY because the Japanese fleet was in the gulf. Those of us between the hills, the ARMY, we were just supposed to hold tight and keep what we had. But it kept on. And then things started to happen. Stealing. Fights. You know. Young men. Power struggles. At first, it was personal stuff, grudges, and then it started getting into the chain of command. I did it, too. Everybody seemed up to something. There wasn't any insurrection so much as disregard, and it started to feel like it was every-man-for-himself. I was a small guy. I didn't like my odds if that happened."

"No, I guess not."

"Couple of us tried to eat leaves. These big, green ones with yellow tips. Tasted like pepper and asprin. Anything we thought could be edible. And the Japanese face terrified us. It could have been anywhere. Still gets to me, of course."

There was a moment during which Sol sipped his beer, but then he abruptly set it down, nearly spilling foam from the head. He slid from the barstool and set some coins on the counter. Emery was addled by this.

"It was all rough," Sol commented, putting on his coat.

"Are you leaving?" Emery asked.

"Yeah, I'm tired. I know I asked you out for a beer, but I think I have to go back on that. Get myself home."

"Oh."

"Look, I know that's a little unacceptable, but uh... I hate talking war while drinking. I know I'm being rude, but I just want to get home."

"Sol, I feel the same way about that kind of talk. It's depressing, but you asked."

"I know I did. Shouldn't have. I uh... listen; I want to thank you for following along earlier, backing me up with Tult when I let him go. You didn't have to do that."

"No?"

"Well, I don't know that I would have. I'll see you on the set tomorrow."

"Sure, see you then," Emery said, thrown off by the unexpected dismissal.

Sol Jamison was an odd person, and even stranger off set, it would seem. The executive producer gathered up his mood and began to exit the pub. Emery decided to say a particular thing, blunt but honest.

"Sol, there's a part of me that wants to like you. But you're not making it easy."

The executive producer turned his head a moment as he walked, his profile bearing a look of annoyance. He slowed for a step but then returned to his usual speed as he neared the exit.

"It'll pass," he said, waving a hand and walking out of the pub, taking all his dreary unexpectedness with him. Emery stared at the doorway and puzzled over what had just happened. There was no real rationality in the night. There had been a firing, an attack, and then Emery had gone out for a beer with Sol Jamison, who was somewhat of a nemesis to him, and nothing had happened. No bonding talk, no shop talk, no argument, no discussion of home-towns or family, and barely any talk on the situation that had created the offer for the beer, the dismissal of Warren Tult. No anything. Flustered and with a near full pint of beer in front of him, Emery lit another cigarette and quickly finished his glass while the non-talkative bartender read a magazine at the end of the bar. When the beer was no longer wasted, Emery exited and began walking back to the studio and his car.

There was simply no knowing certain people. Strangest of all was that he could not decide whether he liked Jamison more or less after this bizarre encounter. He was leaning toward less, but it was somehow a more human, understanding, and even compassionate less.

**Chapter Seventeen**

INT. MOULIN ROUGE NIGHTCLUB – 1959 EMMY CEREMONY - NIGHT

We see seats packed from stage to rear wall, hundreds in attendance. Bright lights and a smoky atmosphere.

EMERY sits with his family several rows from the front, in a suit and with a pleased smile. We see BETH lean over and comment on something. There is much cheer in the air and the two daughters are sitting somewhat still.

CUT TO:

The AWARDS STAGE. GARRISON HELLER stands behind the announcement podium and begins to announce an award.

HELLER:

And this year's winner for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Drama is...

HELLER opens the unsealed envelope and reads. He gives a slight chuckle through the microphone.

HELLER:

Well, what do you know! Two in one night!

The audience begins to cheer and clap, realizing now that someone has won two Emmy's this evening.

HELLER:

I wouldn't mind keeping this one for myself, but if you'd like it, well, come on up here and get it, will ya, Mr. Asher?

The crowd cheers and many stand, as does Emery, smirk on his face, bearing the look of trying to restrain himself. Beth has tears in her eyes and the girls are puzzled, watching their father leave the row for the second time that night. We see Emery make the stage, ushered by a man in a suit near the stairs. He walks to the microphone and shakes Heller's hand. Heller mutters something in his ear and Emery smiles. Heller exits stage left.

EMERY:

(calming, clearing throat)

See friends, I'm in some trouble; I didn't expect to be up here again tonight. For the first time in my career it seems that I don't have any material.

The audience gives a small laugh. EMERY thinks for a moment.

EMERY:

(smiling)

Folks, I'll say this. In the short time with which I have written for those wondrous boxes in each of your homes, I have been privileged to meet and work with some of the greatest television talents of our time. However, I have to keep myself to special thanks, this time, and I offer the following with more gratitude than I can express. First and before all others, my wife, Elizabeth. This is your second public thanking tonight, dear. I love you so much. You're the first to read the script, and either to your own good or bad luck, the last to see the program.

We hear chuckles from several audience members. Several quick shots then of people in the crowd. We see ALFRED HITCHCOCK speaking to a woman beside him. Several other members of the audience. We see HAL WHITCOMB nodding with pleasure. We then get a C.U. on BETH, frowning in amusement.

EMERY (cont.):

I'd like to thank last, but certainly not the least in my mind, every man, woman, and child who has turned on their television and enjoyed what they see there, regardless of whether I'm involved in that moment or not. Thank you for watching. Thank you for these awards. My youngest daughter Vivian will be so pleased. She is nearing two-years old and very much likes to play with daddy's fun little statues.

Louder chuckles from audience.

EMERY:

And due to the speculative nature of The Other Side, the figure of a winged woman holding up an atom is quite nice, really. Maybe poetic.

(beat)

I just want to say that you're all very dear to me and I owe you everything.

FADE TO:

The two Emmys. His third and fourth. That these awards were of august shine and a specialized glamour gave the audience much at which to marvel. Black suits, slicked hair, the glimmer of gold and the singularity of a podium in the center of a large, otherwise vacant stage. Curtains, wood, and between them, the exhibit. More eyes on a man than he could ever feel. Emery felt truly watched, more so than in reviews or by fans, more so even than on those few sets that contained the larger crowd scenes. It felt like college graduation somehow magnified and given money and more attention. This was being noticed. This was standing before the tribe and casting a bit of magic and explaining that yes, his spell was what had made the crops come up that year, and thank you so much for believing.

As he finished his speech, he noticed a peculiar blur in his vision, over a portion of the audience near the rear of the club. He blinked a moment and his sight returned to proper function, but the people across whom the blur had occurred did not. Emery stared at this mass of blur and indistinct movement. Perhaps this was a tension headache, or the brightness of the lights playing with his vision.

Emery gasped and stepped back, his eyes moving quickly over that portion of the audience as his vision came into focus. This was no hallucination of lighting. The people he viewed were not human. They were as if horrid, tall beetles, large as men, faces corrugated with black mandibles and antennae rising from their thick heads into the air. They were snapping their forelegs together, beside people, to no one's notice. Clapping. As his eyes wavered over the crowd, from one side of the large club to the other, Emery discovered that many of the seats were filled with these terrible insect interlopers. They were humanoid in posture, jaws outstretched and chests emblazoned with hard, black shine. He faltered and closed his mouth, standing before the packed house.

They were everywhere, had infested the crowd. There were rows of them, all horrible, mutated, sinister looking creatures. Insect men sat amidst the Los Angeles television elite, hats between their long, metameric antennae, insect females with handbags settled on their abdominal segments. Emery swallowed, seeing all the legs sticking out in odd directions, all the buzzing, hissing noise of their ovation. This infestation existed beside real people who were oblivious to the true form of their neighbors in the seats. There was a haze of cigar and cigarette smoke above the audience, and in this fog of exhales, he thought he could see smaller things swarming about, into and out of the smoke. He saw moths and wasps, flies and hornets. The crowd slowly stopped clapping. He simply stood behind the awards podium.

Emery could not move. His feet would not respond. He choked for a moment and dropped his cigarette to the floor, could not back away from the podium. There was a sheet of paper atop it, he noticed. Had it been there before? No, he was being made to notice, for his thoughts were beginning to dull and his posture began to relax against his desire to run. He could hear an engine-like hum building at the base of his skull. It was as if a small motor had been activated in his mind; it was a druzzing, fly-like scatter of noise in his thoughts. Emery looked down at the sheet of paper while the insects and humans in the audience quieted.

There was a paragraph on the page with the heading above it:

### Emery Asher, to Announce

He glanced out and saw his wife, his wondrous Elizabeth, sitting beside their two daughters. She looked bemused at first, curious. The audience watched and waited. Beth then seemed confused that he was still standing at the podium after having obviously ended his speech. She began gauging him with care. What was happening? Behind his wife was the towering monstrosity of a larger creature, an insect being of much height and pedigree. The shoulders of this being were emblazoned in red from maturity, and its mantis-like head peered quizzically above Beth's skull, watching Emery. Its thorax bore a sporadic pattern of fibrous hairs. Larry Belmont, sitting two seats to Beth's right, stared up at Emery with a degree of pride as his own wife, a horrific, midge-like monster, sat beside him. Larry's young son held Vivian's hand. Emery's fair daughter, so innocent and unconcerned, had her hand in the claw of a small, louse-like dipteron, a demon arthropod drizzling saliva from its elongated mouth and druzzing its small wings against the nightclub chair. Larry didn't know... he couldn't see what was happening, that his family had been infiltrated.

"I- I don't..." Emery tried to speak.

Bernie Dozier's lateral eyes glinted in the reflection of light from the ceiling, while his median eyes caught the light of the stage. Dozier monitored Emery closely, still in his seat with a silent, unmoving head. Beside him sat poor Jamison, oblivious, looking for once to be enjoying himself and unaware of the abominations that surrounded them all, the hideous monsters that masqueraded as human beings. How long? How long had they been infesting Hollywood? Was it just Los Angeles, or were they everywhere?

Emery twitched a moment and his hand came up, placing itself atop the sheet of paper. The hand turned the sheet of paper over and his eyes fell to the text. His mouth opened.

_Read_ , He heard in his mind. It was a tinny and alien sound. This was not a voice, but a vibration of foreign tissues that had invaded the realm of human thought. His own. This became a chorus. Dozens of sounds telling him to read the paper, making him move his lips and don the falsest smile a human being could muster.

In the front row, First Cavalry Lieutenant Merrill of the Confederacy stood from his seat, concerned. He settled his old hand on his pistol and began looking about in suspicion.

CUT TO:

The AWARDS STAGE. EMERY is behind the podium, addressing the audience with worry in his voice.

EMERY:

(reading)

Also... everyone... uh, you should... you should try Richardson's Auto Wax... a... a wax so pure it... it contains the essence of shine, itself. I-I can't stress enough the value...

The audience stares. MERRILL appears to see the insects for what they are. Shocked, he stands fast and draws both his pistol and saber.

MERRILL:

(alarmed and addressing crowd)

HOLD! Who are you? What manner of abomination has trespassed on the sanctity of this hall?

We see MERRILL falter a moment as the insects stand and move quickly toward him. Some scurry down the aisles, some crawl over the seats. Several smaller creatures, insect offspring, take flight into the air. MERRILL shouts in fear and raises his pistol.

We see him fire, bringing one of the flying creatures down. He swings his saber into another, larger insect that is leaping over the seats for him. Knocked to the floor and firing his pistol, jabbing his saber at the unstoppable crowd of monstrous attackers as they swarm over him on the floor of the Emmy awards ceremony, MERRILL screams his last order at Emery on the stage.

MERRILL:

RUN BOY! GET OUT OF HERE!

We see the insects grapple him, crawling atop him, a man disappearing in a massive swarm of shells and legs, wings, antennae, and iridescent segments of thorax.

In moments, the crowd of monsters draws back, revealing that Merrill is gone, the body devoured, leaving behind but a large spilling of blood in which rest the saber and pistol, a few red-stained chevrons and patches, the gnawed-through, Confederate boots beside his broken riding strop, and the lay of broken, exposed bones. At the edge of this gory pool, we can make out the scattered clumps of his torn-out beard beside the blood-soaked Medal of Honor.

CUT TO:

Cayuga. Sanctity. Taughannock with the family. Emery closed his eyes, hands on the podium, and visited many summers. The clean lake surface carried the harks of geese across. The playful splashes of his brother, in childhood, were a short read from the sunning eyes of a lakeside Beth. Taughannock and the busted read of trails that read one through the small attractions. Nature had conspired for everyone who read, to the delight of vacationing ruminations. The smell of car exhaust mingled with the read of the walnut trees, the grassy itch against his ankles as he lounged beside the summer cabin. His father was reading over the fire, and the smell of a dozen meals from a dozen camps could be read. Emery read out over the lake and read a woman giving a read of surprise as she surfaced from the surprisingly cold water beside a boat in the read. The wonderful sensation of Cayuga lake was home, the lake's limbs around boys in a hug of days they would read for many a read after, with a nostalgia that read... for... when one read more of it. When one read the Cayuga brochure. The advertisement. Everyone should have read the advertisement. Reading was all-powerful.

"Our automobile wax is specifically formulated in the Richardson labs," he read, "to keep... to keep your paint-job..."

A tear rolled down his cheek.

"...just like new."

CUT TO:

Silence. EMERY gives a slow pan of the audience. The insects, the humans, the quiet revery of his speech and product pitch. Then a roaring crowd. Blinding strobes of flash. All standing and slamming their hands and limbs together. Beth, the girls, Belmont and Belmont's insect wife and half-human offspring, and Jamison, Heller... clapping and shouting and cheering.

FADE BLACK

Emery's eyes were closed tight. His head felt to split in two. The invertebrate voices crowded out his own thoughts, slamming against the inner walls of his skull, repeating and repeating.

"PARADIGM! NEW DAWN!" they shouted.

The tears left his eyes as he squeezed them tighter. His head pounded in pain. He breathed then and forced his eyes open. They were forever. He could hear them all.

"PARADIGM! NEW DAWN!" Perfect unison.

Warren Tult was there, in the third row. He removed his face, his crooked smile being torn off with it. Dozier laughed from his cretinous recesses and the mandibles of each insect in the crowd jabbered their cheers and hails. It was then that Emery saw it, his M1, propped inside the award podium. Had Merrill prepared the weapon? The 10-inch, blued, steel bayonet was affixed and in active position. There was a ready clip on the floor near the stock. Beside it lay his Musette bag, packed with ammunition should he need to reload. He certainly would.

Emery bent and retrieved the weapon he knew so well. Readied it and took aim on a larger of the beasts. His hands calmed and he inhaled sharply before holding his breath.

"PARADIGM! NEW-"

Emery fired. Dozier's grotesque head popped to the side and a gray, gelatinous substance sputtered upward, the jaws gnashing and the nice suit soaked in the insect's blood discharge. Emery turned ten degrees left in the precise motion of a panning camera, swallowed, aimed, and fired. Another creature's head was sheared open. Ten degrees to the right. Panning.

CUT TO:

Sights. The combustion of powder and the hurtling of lead. Caution. Movements practiced. Exactness. Necessity. Training.

ZOOM TO:

The lower mandible splintering from the face of a little one. Squeals. Emery swiveled again and, as he took aim, could see that Bernie Dozier has been replaced with another Bernie Dozier. The executive was not injured, an infantryman of their rank that had simply been dragged aside while another stepped up to take his place. Emery needed to spend more time with his family. He fired another round.

_More eggs than bullets,_ he heard in his mind. This began to repeat as more insects picked up the feed and re-broadcast the message. It built up and circled his thoughts, crashing against the inner wall of his skull like mad gulls against a cliff face. The mantra was ingeminate and came from a living network. _More eggs... more eggs..._ Emery swayed back, the rifle slipping from his hold to the floor. He couldn't see Beth. _More eggs than bullets._ The man screamed without sound.

The din of the creatures escalated into a boisterous, condescending laughter then, twisting his body as if the utterance from each of these individual insects bore with it an intrinsic pain in his collective nerves. The nightclub jerked left and yawed over on itself. He grunted and fell into the podium, faint of balance, knocking it over. He was quick to follow it to the floor. He sat there on the empty stage beside the toppled podium, microphone feeding back and filling the air with squelch and horrid squeal. Joining into this was the hiving noise of wings and the hissed, clicking laughter of the horde. His shoulders dropped and he peered at them, defeated, unable to gather the strength to stand, weeping and dying and holding his rifle and holding his Emmy and feeling his own thoughts being driven from his head by the constant, near-metallic jabber of the infestation. They had returned to their grand mantra.

"PARADIGM! NEW DAWN!"

And then the intercom sputtered to life overhead. The audience quieted as a woman's voice, Beth's voice, emanated from the speakers down into the large room. Emery tilted his head up and his lip quivered. He could see her again in the audience, having obtained a large microphone. Her voice carried over the intercom and filled the hall.

"Husband, your brother called. He says your mother is in the hospital. He's on his way to see her right now. They call it a stroke. Your ticket is at the front desk."

The podium had not fallen over and neither had he. They were resurrected. Emery stood before it with the microphone nudging against his lips, waiting for his voice to give it clarity and meaning. He reached for the glass of water sitting near the microphone's base and had a long drink, then set it down and brought a cigarette, shaking, to his lips. The people watched. The insects watched. No advertisement page. No rifle. No Merrill and no intercom.

"Thank you," he said, nodding and leaving the stage. There was a brief surge of further ovation as he exited. Heller passed him and gave him a pat on the shoulder, Heller with the silk streaming from his ass across the stage, then upward to the web he had created in the eaves. Emery stepped down and descended to the floor, made his way up the aisles to his row, and quietly waved as he wormed around the knees of others, toward his seat. When there, he gave a last wave and sat down. On stage, Heller began his announcement of the next award.

"Well, I bet you're glad you came tonight, after all. That's four of them, you," Beth said leaning over to his ear, so proud of him, so impressed, knowing he now had two more Emmy's to place with the others on the shelf in the garage. She squeezed his arm in excitement. Emery nodded and leaned back. The night had honored him with two Emmys, one for his writing, and one, not strictly his own, for best new show. This, beyond being deep and secure footholds in his career, had effectively drained all the blood out of Jamison's power over him. He would hire a third writer in the next few days, gain more time with his family. Things would be different after tonight.

Beth looked around for a moment, checking on the distance of the children from her voice, and then placed her lips against Emery's right ear.

"You were very handsome up there," she said. Emery smiled. He gave her a quick glance of happiness. This was a grand night. Her eyes shifted emotions then and, after another cautionary look about, she returned to his ear. He waited. After a moment of inhalation, she told him a thing. His blood heated and he exhaled, somewhat shocked at her brazen statement. He cleared his throat and tried to hide the surprise in his voice.

"That's... audacious of you. And demanding. And wonderfully lewd. I love it."

"You're interested, then?"

"Oh yes."

"Good," she said, mischievous and a little proud.

"The after-party won't be too long. We'll be home in no time," he said, "I'll make certain of it."

**Chapter Eighteen**

He stood with Jamison, as if cohorts in shame, two boys that had stolen their father's car and run it into a hydrant. The father sat behind his desk with a pale complexion, having been strained much in recent days by the onset of a direction change, involving his status in television. The path of the network now seemed to be leaning toward situational comedies and saga shows. There had been a memo, and, shortly after, a list. The anthology format was worn and tethered to expense, and was no longer to be given much consideration. The father was to find work on a variety of other projects, but those he now hovered over were to be dismissed at the rate fans dropped off. The father was Bernie Dozier. His two boys, Emery and Sol, stood like mannequins atop his well-trafficked floor, boys arranged to be stand-offish, sharp of eye and good looking in the newest suits from the commercials. The list Bernie Dozier had received had weighed on his mind for several days. There were things he cared about on the list.

Dozier began his discussion with the two by approaching the trouble through a brief introduction about how the public was changing out from under them, and that certain expectations for network programs were beginning to change, as well, but he was not allowed to finish this approach; Emery cut straight into it.

"Explain that. 'Changing out from under us.' Describe what's changing and how you've measured it. Because I don't believe you, and I'm not changing the show to be another sort of show."

"Em, hold your horses, let me-"

"Show me that change, Bernie. Empirically. I want to touch it. Because I know it's nonsense," Emery continued. Jamison sighed.

"It doesn't matter, Asher. It's semantic, and this is only just the setup," Jamison interjected, "What he means is 'cancelled'. That's what he's getting at. The show has been cancelled."

Emery's blinks stuttered his eyesight with a strobe of the man before him. Dozier. Black. Dozier. Black. His temples warmed and his knees loosened a moment, having become as if seaweed. He kept them from wobbling as he stroked his hand through his slick hair, clearing his throat and wetting his lips.

"Cancelled," Emery repeated as a choppy, overwhelming urge struck him. He reached quickly into his breast pocket for the cigarettes.

"Sol's right. And it's all of them," Bernie said, "They're shutting us down. Not just your show, but all three of my shows and one other prospect that doesn't even have a finished pilot yet."

"Shit, I was right. When does this take effect?" Jamison asked.

"Well, by _their_ viewpoint, months ago. You two got a season, and it was a good one, but there won't be a second."

If a man was lazy and did a poor job, he could find his name on the troubled end of a termination slip. If a man disregarded schedule, was chronically late to the point of having no practical use, he could be fired. A man might be a hot-head and gossip, a manufacturer of problems who later socks his boss like Warren Tult had done, and that man would be fired. A worker might prospect where it was not appropriate, in the areas of a next position, a love affair, theft, or being the simple thorn in a lion's paw, and for these could face his expulsion from the place in which he had committed his untoward acts. Many problems might arise in a given week, and termination was an accountable means with which to solve unaccountability. Emery had done none of these things, however. He was accountable, a dray horse. He was not lazy. He excelled where others fell behind. The work he performed was neither sporadic nor poor. Every atom in his televised being knew the ropes and the schedule, and he had not only lived by them, he had made certain others were living by them, as well.

"This is too sudden, Bernie. How much notice did you get?" Sol asked.

"Three days. I got wind of it Tuesday."

"How do we get around it?" Emery asked then, "Who do we go to? Another network?" Dozier sighed then.

"You don't go to anybody. CBS owns the show. When they kill it, it's dead. If you don't like it, you're gonna have to talk to someone a helluva lot higher up than me. You can try the network producers, but they'd rather eat a bowl of shit than go tit-for-tat with a cancelled writer."

Emery missed his family. He worked through the flus and ills of each season. He often rubbed his bleary eyes at one in the morning, in his small study, his hand a frantic honeybee over lines of dialogue. He was not late to work. Ever. He was late home always. Sacrifice had become his muse. His very position required him arrive early each day, and he did. He was no troublemaker, not a blustery sort, did not gossip, or give rumor a place in his head. He did not create problems. He created agency where there was only bedlam. He controlled himself between those lines of his life that were controlled by others. He did not attempt to dislodge his fellows, nor was he strictly licit. He was accountable where few could count. He was respectable where there was so little respect.

Emery was methodical, but had racing blood in him and an occupational ethic that, were it given legs and a place in the Hollywood Gold Cup, could have outrun just about anything on four legs. His temper rose and he fought back the urge to shout.

"We won two fucking Emmys. Two! In one goddamn night! How can they possibly cancel a show that pulls in two fucking Emmys in the first season?" Emery said, quickly losing the bout against his ever-raising voice.

"Yeah, and I got a Producer's Guild Award. I love it, but Asher, it's the creative types that give the awards. They don't keep the budget or make the numbers. The _audience_ is what keeps you afloat. Maybe it was different in New York, but out here, your demographic is your bread and butter. And anthologies don't have much of an audience, these days. People want comedy. They want to laugh. Situational comedy is taking over, and if you're not on board, you're overboard, you see? If they watch drama, they want it to carry over. Remind 'em what happened last week. These shorts just don't get a following like they used to; too much like radio. The network is cutting you loose before you lose, so to speak."

"We have a strong audience," Jamison said.

"No, we have a small core audience. And they're loud, but not much beyond that. When _The Other Side_ comes on, most people are watching Bennie Mink lock himself out of his house over on ABC. Even Hitchcock is on the ropes and NBC is tryin' to make a royal flush of comedies even as we speak. CBS needs a comedy to compete with the other networks, and _The Other Side_ is right in the middle of the time slot the network wants for that comedy. Thing is, we've got speculation shows, and _The Other Side_ is turning out to be one too many. My other shows are out because they don't draw. Your show is out because it's sitting in someone else's seat."

"The _sponsors_ want comedies," Emery said, angry.

"Now, hold on, Asher. Not everything is about the sponsors. Nestle and General Motors don't care what we air as long as they can stick a commercial in it and make themselves look good. They're in so long as we don't screw up the balance."

"No, this is a sponsor problem," Emery repeated, "It's obvious."

"It's really not. I wish it were, because a guy could fight that some, but this is worse. Our uncles are kickin' us out. This bad news comes right from our own dinner table. And it's not just us. Harry Thompson's show is being thrown to daytime and I know for a fact _The Tracker_ was just cancelled."

"We have Orson Banry commissioned for an episode next season. The best scripts we've ever had are already lined up. Belmont has been giving me gold for two months now and it's all set up for season two. It'll be a lot stronger and better than the first season has been," Emery defended, nervously lighting his cigarette and pulling a hard drag from it, trying to block out the insults he had in his mind, to continue speaking in a rational way. Jamison took over, rattling off with reinforcing, though defensive, statements.

"It's true, Bernie. Emery's setup for season two is amazing. Belmont, too. And the novelist, Banry. You know him. I'm telling you, you've only seen the half of it. Big actors, great stories, and the directors... shit, if _The Tracker_ is going off the air, we could maybe get Claude Giroux to show up in an _Other Side_ story. That'd bring in even more fans. We have everything arranged, Bernie. And we can arrange more. Easy. It's all gonna happen, and under budget, for once. You should see the scripts Belmont and the new guy, Moffat, have been giving us. It's a gold vein. We're right in front of it. All we need is another season. We'll prove the public wants the show. You'll see it. It's a given."

Larry Belmont, beyond being a talent for which Emery had met few equals, was both young and fiery. His scripts were dark, based more in horror than those other arts of speculation, and while Larry had a great respect for Emery as a writer, a respect that held Emery as somewhat of a mentor, the young man did not write as Emery did. His work had some odd, though fascinating, conceits. The stories turned on themselves, crawled through muck with an expertise difficult to take apart. Most of them were marvelous scripts, and he had a firm seat in the second season, with seven episodes exclusively his own. Emery had found that going over Belmont's stories was easy. You admired and let your pen fall here and there, for slight alterations, and that was the end. It was revision, not re-writing. The thought had crossed Emery's mind that, in the third season, the elder writer might take a prolonged hiatus from writing scripts to work on other projects, like the films for Pacific he needed to complete, and that young Belmont might be given the reigns as head writer for a spell, or indefinitely. Larry deserved it, and was hungry enough to perform well. Emery had found a touch of himself in the other writer, but one bettered from being able to jump straight into television, skipping the peculiar and uneven, lesser sung path Emery had been forced to take. Calvin Moffat had only been hired the week previous, as a third writer. He showed great promise but was unproven.

"He's right, Bernie. The second season will change everything," Emery said.

"No, guys. It won't. There's no show. And it's not up to me. You're fired, is all. And me. Don't forget, I'm fired, too. From all three shows. That's the bare fact. I suggest you start looking for the next gig, and fast."

Emery's hands clenched and his jaw drew taut. His memory brought him Beth, in the crowd during his acceptance speech at the Emmys, admiring him. His memory called up Bernie Dozier in the crowd, nodding with a stark and well-intentioned piety. The stars of television and the backdrop of that industry had engaged for a night of formal, hope-bejeweled celebration on the Los Angeles set. The speeches and the sentiment. All the thanks and every glimpse of the crew as main character, for once. The awards ceremony had been broadcast. The viewers had seen every person to cross that stage. The viewers had been informed of who was who and what was what. They just needed time to let it show in their habits, time to change the channel and settle things. Most anyone who had watched the Emmy's, and who had not yet seen the show, would likely now tune in to see _The Other Side_ , at least for an episode or two. Emery had them. They were waiting for him but they would not stay for long. His response to these viewers needed to be immediate.

"Two episodes. Give us two more episodes. If the numbers don't go up once the episodes air, then we're done. Fine. Just give us two episodes."

"Oh, I'd love to. I really would. That's no bullshit, Asher. This is my job, too, you know. Thing is, I have nothing to give, and like I said, I'm out, too." Emery's fists grew white and his stomach ached. He breathed hard through his nostrils, smoke trailing up his arm from the cigarette.

"You son of a bitch, I stood on that stage in front of that crowd like an ass, thanking the whole goddamn world for the success of this show," Emery rattled.

"Squash that, Asher. We got enough problems without you calling anybody names. I know you went up there. And I know-"

"TWO FUCKING EMMYS," Emery shouted.

"Don't you yell at me," Bernie countered, somehow calm, "This ain't me. I'm with you. That was a feat-and-a-half, and you should be proud of those awards. I am. When you stepped down off that stage, I had half a mind to run over and kiss you. This trouble ain't me. You understand?"

There was difficulty with standing still, and so Emery gave in to his anger's want for motion. He began pacing, rubbing his face and moving, stopping at times to take in the now silly and weak figure before him: A man in charge who had no say. At that moment, Emery's mother was in a hospital in Miami, being seen to by her sister and a weekend visit from William. The stroke had rendered her unconscious. Emery's place was there, with his mother, perhaps attempting to rouse her, or at the least help his brother cope with the tragedy that was occurring. Instead, he had stayed to meet with Dozier, to keep at it because the show needed him, working the marrow from his bones with every line-change, every season two script rewrite. He had forgone something otherworldly and achingly important for his job, a terrible compromise that had weighed against the true, lifelong responsibility to his mother and brother, and now, as if a trick of the gods or simple wanweird, he discovered he had stayed around only to be fired.

"Bernie, where the hell are we supposed to go?" Jamison asked.

"People love the goddamn show!" Emery shouted. Dozier opened his mouth but nothing came out at first. He re-thought his statement with care. After a moment, he gave a small nod and put his hands up defensively, speaking at a slow pace.

"Emery, it's like this: People you've _talked to_ love the show. I've heard 'em too. And they do, they love it dearly. But... there are a lot of other people out there, people we don't really know, and it seems they don't like the show as much as certain other shows."

"That's not true. They read the reviews. They see the awards. They know what they want to watch," Emery replied.

"Yes, they do that. I agree with you. But they also read the negative reviews. And they see the awards the other networks get. And they know they want to watch more than one show at a time and they can't. During our time-slot, viewers have more than _The Other Side_. They have Tom Dawson's comedy/variety show over on NBC, and they've got Bennie Mink on ABC. They want to watch all three, and they can't, so they pick one show to watch in that time-slot, each week, and for them, _that's_ what's on television at eight p.m. on a Friday night. If they want speculation, they wait until 9:30 when Hitchcock comes on. In the percentage, we're just not the show that Friday night wants most. That's all this is."

"You're not good for anything," Emery repeated, "Nothing at all. Starting things that you can't finish; look at you. How many of your shows have been cancelled over the years, Bernie? Have you hit a dozen, yet?"

"That's it. Get if off your chest, Asher. Keep it comin'," Dozier said, feigning boredom.

"My mother is dying in a hospital right now. In Miami. She's dying, Bernie. You know why I'm not there? With my mother? Because I'm goddamn dedicated to this show. What a slap in the face this is. Bernie, you're a petty, toothless alligator. You're hands aren't tied; I think you're just too _weak_ to do anything."

There was a silence then, one in which Dozier seemed offhand and willing to take these stabs. Jamison was having trouble with Emery's insults, however. This sort of tactic in argument was often uncalled-for and cheap.

"I didn't know about your mother. I'm truly sorry," Dozier said then.

"Fuck you. You're an impotent cod," Emery said, looking away.

"Okay, Em. Let's calm it down, here. That's too much," Jamison said.

Thoughts of his mother had overwhelmed Emery the previous week. He had flown out at first knowledge of the stroke, seen Susa in the hospital. She had been weak and thin. In only the year-and-a-half since she had helped him pack for the move to Hollywood, her body had changed much. Had she not been eating? Her voice over the phone had been the same, so usual, so motherly, and accepted. The idea that any morning now might be the one in which she did not wake passed through his thoughts as if flung by a sporadic, always-present trebuchet. Here he was in an office being canned. There she was, across the country, struggling to stay alive. In a dream. In a bed. Forget _The Other Side_ , forget the awards, Susa had seen every episode of his life, and now she was unconscious in a Florida hospital bed.

Bernie Dozier seemed calm, but Jamison knew better. This relaxed, better-luck-next-time appearance was an act. Jamison had several times in the past seen the manner by which Dozier blew his top. It followed mildness. Insult. Sometimes, it was a threat that brought Bernie up, and sometimes, the right insult at the right time. Emery was unaware of this facet of Bernie Dozier, and Jamison did not want the trait to show itself, not to someone as then-aggravated as Emery Asher. That was trouble, and far more than the usual sort.

"You didn't answer my question," Jamison said, reverting the conversation carefully.

"What question?" Dozier returned, surfacing from thoughts of Emery's insult and the situation of the writer's mother.

"What are we supposed to do now?"

"How should I know?" Dozier replied, "I'm sure you'll produce somewhere, but I don't know where. You're a resource. You find a pocket to pool in. You figure it out for yourself. That's all. Come on, you know the way. And Emery, pal, you can write anything. You'll have new work lined up before the word even gets out the show's been cancelled. You'll probably have offers by the end of the week."

"Don't you try and handle me, Bernie. This show is _not_ going to be cancelled," Emery reinforced.

"It's already done."

"Who do I talk to?"

"The wind."

"I don't believe that," Emery said, "I've learned a few things over the years, so what son of a bitch do I punch in the mouth to get this production back on track?" Jamison said nothing. His experience in television steered him in a particular way, whether in success or setback. This manner of him was one of quiet, followed by forceful planning and swift action. In the moment, however, he preferred to stand, hear, gauge, and say little. Sol Jamison was a hard-ass, but only when it was needed.

"All right. Fine. You want to punch somebody?" Dozier offered, "Okay. It's you. Tomorrow morning, you go ahead and look in the mirror. That's the guy. The asshole you can blame. And you should have punched him a year ago. And you didn't. Voila."

This was as if the talk before a bout. Emery moved forward but Sol grabbed him and held him back. Dozier got to his feet quickly, a look of alarm on his face. Emery had frightened him a moment, and to the soldier and boxer still in Emery, this felt quite good.

"No, no. Come on now, ease back," Sol muttered, holding the writer back.

"You're good for nothing, Bernie. NOTHING," Emery said, face red and hands balled.

"Ease back," Sol repeated. Emery shook his head before yanking his arm from Sol's grip and exiting the room. He muttered a thing neither of the two men could hear, and then slammed the door behind him. Sol stood in the emptiness of the room, the tinge of violence having abated and the room suffering from the stillness of obvious thought.

"He's just angry."

"Of course he is," Dozier said.

"When do we tell the crew? Christ, and how?"

"Sooner the better. But not today. And tell Asher that. Not today. Let everybody have fun on the fourth and be with their families. Enjoy the holiday. Sorry to ruin yours, but I wouldn't have told the two of you if it weren't for how it's coming down the pipe. Had to do it," Dozier explained.

"Tomorrow, then?"

"So, yeah. Tomorrow. But don't send everybody my way. Please, Sol. Send 'em to their agents and unions. Let 'em piss in the mail, not in my ear. Hell, send 'em to Asher. I'll write up an explanation and mail it out Monday. Network logo, all that."

"I really thought this show was going somewhere, Bernie. I didn't at first, that's true, but it grew on me. A lot. This is a good show."

"I know. I've been pushing to re-run it off season, but it doesn't look like that's gonna happen, either. Being good isn't enough to call shots out here, these days."

"Yeah, that much I _do_ know. Damn it. I liked this production."

"I'm sorry, Sol. That's how it is."

"Then that's how it is. Let's uh, maybe keep an eye on your car for a second, huh?" Both men approached the window and glanced down at the parking lot.

"Think he'll do somethin'?" Dozier asked.

"Maybe. That man's ego is like wet dynamite."

In the distance, there was a crack of ignited powder and an explosive report. This was an early detonation before nightfall, and harbinger of Independence Day. Emery exited the building and the world felt to be swiveling. As he approached the Roadster, he spied Bernie Dozier's sedan, only a few spots away. How nice it would be to drag a rock across the paint... Emery sighed as he reached his car. How could he tell Beth the show was cancelled? After moving her across the country and leaving her behind in a house each day? After she had spent the lion's share of the past year without him most days and nights? How could he tell her that sacrifice was for a couple of paychecks and a fade to black? Slumping behind the wheel of his car in front of the offices, Emery sighed and let his forehead rest on the wheel.

There was another burst of sound up the street, someone lighting off a firework, probably to the bemusement of a child or two. Emery's trunk was loaded with such poppers, flyers, and cracklers. He leaned back in the driver's seat and slowly keyed the ignition. _Tomorrow,_ he thought, _Tomorrow, I'll fly to Miami to see William and mother again. All of us. We'll all go. Have our fun tonight, and then fly out tomorrow._

In the office above, there was an awkward pause. Jamison and Bernie were within proximity of one another, watching through the window as Emery pulled out of the parking lot. A small drop of rain struck the window. Shortly after, there was another. Neither men moved or spoke. They had worked on projects in the past. They knew their version of the score and could both read it well enough. Something was off, however. Sol had not left the office, as Emery had, and this bothered Bernie. It seemed Sol Jamison had something else to say, but wasn't saying it. The air was awkward. A few moments passed before Bernie spoke with a light tone.

"How uh, how are the kids?"

Sol extinguished whatever thoughts had kept him in the office then. His face twisted into a cold ghost before exhaling hard. He exited the room. The door did not slam, but was close to it. That was that. The cancellation had happened and the news would now spread throughout the crew. The upsetting portion of the cancellation was complete, but the hard work of it had only just begun. There was a moment wherein Bernie Dozier, having returned to his desk, set his tired face in his hands, but this moment was short and he regained his composure. He sat up. His eyes trailed the floor as he nibbled at his lower lip, lost in though in his hollow office. Slowly, he reached into his desk and extracted a pint of scotch. He uncorked the bottle and had a pull, still staring at the door. Then the bottle was corked again and placed back into the desk. He groaned, clutching his stomach just above the kidneys. .

"Christ," he mumbled, pain from his ulcer spiraling into his thoughts. The ulcer did not enjoy scotch. Lately, he had made some ground in keeping these two apart. He hunched over his desk for a moment and then made his way to his feet, breathing heavy until adjusting to the ulcer's clamor.

"Good for nothing?" he repeated, annoyed.

Near the door, he gained his hat and coat, donned them with a frown. It was beginning to rain out but his car was near, and untouched by the angry writer. After a moment, he wriggled his wrists to get his sleeve-ends feeling right, and then reached over, turning the doorknob.

"Fuck you, I'm good for lots of things," he muttered, hitting the light switch and exiting his office for the night.

**Chapter Nineteen**

Eddie Dodder had a charged overhand right that could shove your jaw up through your eyes, and he had used it to great effect. Emery's nineteen-year-old frame swiveled and the cold crept over him. There were eons of waiting in line, a queue long as humanity itself. He stood there behind all the other soldiers Dodder had knocked comatose, waiting to wake up, but he could not cut in line. He would have to wait in unconsciousness until all the men in front of him woke up, then he would have his turn at consciousness again, and he could return to the real world.

"What did he get you with?" Emery asked the man ahead of him.

"Oh, a silly flurry. I just didn't see it right, was all. Blurred me for a second while he swung that damn anvil."

"That's what got me," Emery said, "that big, overhand right."

"A haymaker."

"That's the one."

Of course, Emery waited in line with tolerance and patience, making his way forward until Lieutenant Merrill ushered him beyond the sleepers gate and bade him good luck. The world drifted white and he slowly sat up on the ring floor. Dodder stood in his corner, concerned with the state of Emery's recent, unconscious activity, which had manifest as sporadic shudders against the floor.

Time spun. Emery was awake. Eddie Dodder was formidable, and ruled the lightweight roost of the ARMY, but not for long. Emery watched, five months later, as Eddie simply disappeared beneath a two-ton supply crate falling from the Philippine sky on a parachute. The dilemma came from nowhere. They were the demolition men, a walking squad, and wary of all. Then the first crate dropped. There was a cheer from every hungry man. And Eddie Dodder. Then his cheer ended and Eddie disappeared. A horrible noise of cracks and dull snaps. A crate surrounded in dust had appeared where Dodder had stood moments before. It was faster than the time it took for Emery to stop and think of making sound. He pointed at the crate and tried to get the words out. Another soldier did, and all came running. The crate was shoved over after a short while. What they found beneath it would never leave them.

"Jesus, he never even saw it," someone muttered.

Page Girdwood was a little girl, so young, but had a speed that caused her to outrun most adults. She was a good runner, and when she was given the task of taking final orders from the United States to Emery's squad far off in Manila, she ran so fleet of foot over the waves that the victory wards of Marathon would not have caught her. She was an incarnate of Hermes. The wings that extended from her ankles were plastic trinkets, really, but they got the symbol across. In her purest sense, it could have been said she traveled at the rate of her own beauty. She could be standing in front of you with your orders even before you realized she was there. When she appeared, but ten years-old, before the murderous crate with Emery's orders, when she helped him to his feet, Emery's brief squeal of fright abated. He looked at the orders the little girl had brought him. Dodder was gone, and Emery was chosen to be the next man to go. The next to die. His orders said so: _By/on 15_ th _, Aug: PFC Asher, Division casualty, to be buried in Cypress Hills National Cemetery, Mount of Victory Plot, by/on Sept. 15_ th _. CoD: Explosion-- >Blood Loss._

Each day, someone was lost, and there was a betting pool on which man would be next. Paige Girdwood's child-like appearance was only a ruse. She was the Angel of Death, and she brought the orders, and she was both sudden and disconsolate. Dodder had not even been listed in this pool, but there he was, a mess of angles and ruptured skin tangled and mashed with the island ground. The vote was in, the money wagered. Emery was next. He had orders to die. It was spiritually official. This would probably come from the Japanese, a military force that no doubt held much ground ahead, on the other side of the large gulleys, or possibly in them. Emery found himself hoping that, if he were next to die, it would be the Japanese that got him, not the suddenness of a dropping crate, or an incorrect detonation, or the slow torture of starvation, his days curled in the grip of fading vitality.

CUT TO:

INT. A U.S. MEDICAL SCHOOL SURGERY SUITE - TIME UNKNOWN

A lowered, circular room, designed for demonstration and lecture. It contains two gurneys and several doctors in surgical gowns. The ceiling is vaulted to allow a second story of surrounding students.

We see the students gazing down through windows, waiting for the demonstration, a procedure for which they seem prepared to take notes. The doctors are also professors, it seems. The onlookers hold writing pads and jot quickly, glancing down from the second floor, watching the subject, waiting for the procedure to begin. We recognize some of them: Emery's children, Rebecca and Vivian, are present. So are William Asher, Warren Tult, and Alfred Hitchcock, among many others we may or may not recognize. Beth is not present.

EMERY ASHER is strapped to one of the gurneys. On the other lays the body of his mother, SUSA. EMERY wakes and struggles against his restraints, nude and in a panic.

CUT TO:

EMERY'S P.O.V., WIDE ANGLE. We see the DOCTOR PROFESSORS standing around, bending over into Emery's view, into frame. They hold various tools of dissection and surgery. Beyond them and all around frame, we see the circular array of students peering down from the second floor.

EMERY (V.O.):

What... what's happening?

LEAD DOCTOR:

Hush now. This is our time. You're gone.

EMERY:

No, that's not true.

LEAD DOCTOR:

Ssh. Give it time.

CUT TO:

Susa. He needed to see her before it was too late. His dear mother. If he could get to Miami quick enough, if he was sincere in his love, she would not go the route of his father so soon. She would have out her coming years in the fortune of acceptable health. A stroke was not so troubling. People had comas and did not die, if the care was taken and the will was strong. Emery leaned his head over and viewed her on the gurney beside him. Miami was there, but he could not move. Miami was so close to him, yet so far from his straps.

"What are you going to do to her?" Emery asked. The lead surgeon lifted a length of arterial canula while an assistant readied an aneurysm hook. The assistant, an apprentice, was a Japanese man with familiar eyes above his mask. He slit into one of Susa's arteries, near the collarbone, and then glanced over the body, cocking his head, estimating.

"This is America. We embalm our dead," the apprentice answered.

"That's... you have to stop, that's my mother."

He could recall the short words she had used when he returned home from the war, the way she had preferred not to speak of her husband's passing. So few syllables. Sharp and unfeeling.

"I'm glad to be home. I missed you," Emery had said in the terminal.

"Yes, of course. I'm glad you're home, too. William will be here tonight from D.C. He wanted to be here to meet you, but his flight was pushed back."

His mother had aged. It had only been a few years, but Susa looked weathered more than she should have. Living at home, without Henry or the kids, almost all at once, had taxed her immeasurably.

"It was awful there," he had said in the car, driving home from the airport.

"Certainly, but you're back now."

"I wish I'd learned about dad sooner."

"Well, you were far away."

"You or William should have sent a letter. You should have. It wasn't right I didn't know for so long."

"Oh, didn't you have enough to worry about? We didn't want to make it worse for you, and some letters weren't making it over to the soldiers. They talked about it in the Post."

It did not seem right, and it never would. Emery had not been there when his father died, due to a world circumstance beyond his control, a human disaster. His regret for this had diminished over the years, but would never fully vacate. They had not told him about his father's death for over a month. He had looked daily, while in the fields and tents and gulleys of Leyte, even above the Earth in a Skytrain, upon the photograph he had brought along, the one in which he stood beside his father before he had left for the induction center. He had looked fondly and lovingly at that image for a month, without knowing the elder of those two men was dead. He didn't find out until a few days prior to the worst part of his tour. All of it at once.

Emery stretched as much as he could on the gurney. The surgeon motioned to the apprentice and the students above scribbled quickly. Emery worried he would not be there when his mother died, just as with his father. Was Emery such an awful boy? Susa's face had not weathered so much as her hands. She wore her age there, in the fingers and wrists. No liver spots or arthritic kinking, but the skin was weathered, and somewhat gloomy. Having her son go off into the war might have taken ten years off her life. Losing Henry might have cost her another ten. That would leave her looking down the sickle at sixty, not but five years off.

There were days she had swum in the lake while her husband fished. Those were the precocious times, when William had learned the art of unruliness, and Emery had begun the age-old trait of believing he did not need his parents much. This, for both children, was the nature of independence, something Susa proffered in them greatly, but a thing that had caused them to turn from her too quickly. The times had chosen to make men too early, and boys stayed around so shortly. Henry would come home from the shop, reeking of butchery, his hands stained red and apron in need of intensive bleaching. She washed and prepared the better meats the Asher family ate. She attempted to teach her boys a bit of her wisdom, which was cagey and always unexpected.

Henry had loved his wife dearly, but showed it most in the summer. The summer was the time for boys to be. For love to show itself. This had been obscured and lost to her when summer proved to be the time when Henry passed. Summer then became the time of year in which all the bad news came: Her youngest son's war injury, the butcher shop foreclosure, the death of her husband, and now her stroke and hospitalization. Summer was now where she waited to wake up as the great bird of coma pecked the bits from her mind. What had once been a wondrous time for vacation and family had become the season of fate's hag.

The pain occurred on a shriek of flesh as the scalpel hit his sternum and slowly dragged down to his naval. He lifted against his leather restraints and gave a scream. To this, the apprentice wadded a large ball of gauze and, after pinching the joints of Emery's jaw to force the mouth open, packed the young man to quiet. Unable to breathe or scream with his mouth, Emery grunted and let the water run from his eyes as the incisions continued and the students above watched with curious eyes. They were bear cubs intently watching an elder fetch fish from the river.

He turned his head and saw the large hose. The apprentice snaked it down his mother's throat and then taped it in place roughly. William sat among the students above, dictating into his recorder, watching every detail of the procedures for his article. The saw's teeth gristled into Emery's first ribs and after a moment, snapped through to the next. His mind drifted on the urgency of fatal pain. His temples cooled and his eyes ached behind the clenched lids. With his upper palate mashed against the gauze, his tongue was forced back enough to gag him the more each time he tried to make sound. He had lost track of pain some time ago. He remembered now. Perhaps he was on a drooping bed-cot in Leyte with his knee having been sent through a grinder. Had he returned?

Then his doppelganger appeared, behind the surgeons. Another Emery Asher, in a black suit, looking up and addressing the onlookers. He was the host of this surgery. There was a camera in the suite, and a second above, among the small audience. Bob Keith sat amongst the viewers, telling the camera what to do. Many of these viewers were Antioch kids. He knew some of these people. He knew his doppelganger. He knew the apprentice, as well, for he had once stabbed the man to death against an incline. He knew the alpha-doctor. That southern accent. The regal manner of his posture and quick motions. The bone-saw may has well have been a saber.

CUT TO:

INT. MEDICAL SUITE

Amid onlookers, we see through the spectator window, looking down at the surgery suite and its occupants.

We see HOST ASHER begin his introduction, all the while we are zooming slowly in on him, until he takes up about half-frame. He gestures, he moves his eyebrows, he annunciates well. There is a cigarette in his fingers and a look of intrigue on his face.

HOST ASHER:

Is there a doctor in the house?

The onlookers give in to mild chuckles.

HOST ASHER (CONT.):

For tonight's episode, the doctor is most certainly in. A surgeon, to be precise, and one that fate has given much acclaim and the pedigree of reputation only those brightest of our professionals can hope to attain. In this case, Dr. Merrill, a genius in the medical field and an instructor for which potential future doctors will cut their teeth. He is a man who could be said to have saved as many lives as he has lost. Dr. Merrill is given only the most difficult work, you see. Those patients with but a thread's width chance of survival. Patients many doctors would deem hopeless and without a chance at living.

What the world does not see, however, is that Dr. Merrill's surgical genius, often experimental in tone, comes to him by chance. He is a man who is expert at hiding his true rationale, his impetus for the surgeries he performs. You see, the good doctor has an addiction. He is an addict of luck. That rare thing that by its own random design causes many of life's highest and lowest points.

HOST ARCHER here holds up a faded coin and flips it in the air, catching it again before continuing.

HOST ARCHER (cont.):

Pure chance. During each surgery, he has but one outside artifact on his person. It's a very old coin. This one. And he keeps it in his pocket while he works over the body in question. This coin, so simple in appearance and function, has selfishly controlled his skill for over a decade. Before each surgery, Dr. Merrill flips the coin. This single act, out of view of patients and professionals, hidden from the world, decides whether he is fated to save a life, or end one. Whether he is to play guardian angel or a sinister reaper in the sterility of silver and white. The matter is quite simple: Tails, and your dead. We call tonight's episode _Fifty-Percent of Genius._

FADE TO:

Susa whimpered as the jugular drainage tube began drawing out her material. Her blood, draining from her body, moved at the rate of the embalming fluid, which was in a second tube that fed the glutinous liquid into her. Emery's tears dripped from his cheeks onto the gurney. He lurched upward several times, attempting to free himself.

"No sense arguing," Merrill said, "I flipped it twice. Tails. Both times."

Emery groaned from the deep movement of his ribs jostling apart, but this only caused him to choke on the bunched gag of antiseptic gauze. Bernie Dozier stepped in close, leaning over the writer and examining the surgeon's work. Emery's anger resulted in a scream, both from bitterness and physical trauma. Crying out nearly dislodged the gag.

"It's not your fault," Dozier said, "It was a big show and you're just one guy. Nobody could have kept it up like that. Nobody." Emery squinted in pain and then stared with much hate at the producer. Bernie was a handler. He identified with others as a means of displacing them.

Dozier's face unhinged, then, swinging wide, exposing the jagged mandibles. He peered at Emery through the hideous face of an insect, looming over Emery's cadaver with an eager hunger.

"Find the node. I want it," the insect muttered. Merrill nodded, positioning his elbows and nudging hard, opening up Emery's chest with a grunt and a shove. Sol Jamison approached and stood beside the insectile Dozier. Exposed, Emery's heart was snipped from its tethers and removed, dropped into a glass jar. Sol muttered quietly to the Japanese apprentice, who then used a hose to fill the jar with formaldehyde.

"Weak heart," the surgeon said. Jamison screwed a lid down onto the jar and taped a label onto the lid's surface. He wrote the contents on the label.

Then the lungs. They were filleted from his chest cavity, then severed from the windpipe and jerked from his chest. They, too, were placed into a jar, packed down with the palm of Sol's hand. The formaldehyde came and soon overflowed from the jar. Sol screwed down a lid with a label. He wrote the name. After this, Bernie lifted the jar with his pincers and examined the lungs through the glass, exhibiting a minor curiosity. There were black splotches on the tissue.

"Smoker's lungs," the surgeon said, shaking his head in judgement, "Tsk tsk."

The liver. The gall bladder. The spleen. All set into jars soon filled with formaldehyde. Sol affixed labels on each, admiring his duty while Dozier grunted, quite pleased with the harvesting and preserving of Emery's organs. Susa stopped moving. The tubing that had been red, removing her blood, had gone clear. There was but embalming fluid in her now. Her eyes had hardened and dried. Her face had locked into a final positioning, an expression of torment.

"Get an eye, he doesn't need both," Sol said, staring down at Emery's face. This was done with several digs and a hard yank. Emery's breath had been held and did not want to return. After the insect was satisfied, the surgeon began rooting around, looking for something amid the pig-trough that remained of Emery's upper half.

"No, hold on... there it is. Right there," the surgeon said, his hands in Emery's cavity at a spot near the bottom of the stomach, just off to the side and beneath the slide of large intestines. Dozier grunted and began salivating. Dr. Merrill set himself to task, removing the find, snipping an artery and severing all ties to the body that had grown this particular thing. This was the excogitation node. When Dr. Merrill tugged this node from Emery's body, Dozier squealed and reached for it, jaws wide.

"Wait," the apprentice said, examining the small organ, shaped somewhat like an appendix, "I've never seen one like this. Look here, at the fatty base. Those flecks of black and the way they coat the ancillary valves."

"What are they?" Sol asked. Dozier squelched as his head tilted atop his neck, a wriggling motion that demonstrated his pleasure with this moment.

"We knew his creativity would be sickly," the surgeon added, "but I didn't suspect the organ to be this diseased. Top to bottom, look: The whole damn thing is crusted in irony."

Emery's daughters were among the students, watching his dissection and waiting for the man they were supposed to know as a father. They knew him little. Was he a good father? In the broadest sense, he had been a successful provider. He had converted a pint of blood into many scripts, and the money had come. He was not like his own father, however. Emery was not often present. The vacations in Cayuga were mostly for himself, an attempt at regaining a thing he loved so much. His daughters were somewhat bored with the place, as was Beth.

A breeze drifted through the surgery suite from an opening door. She entered in heels and made it to the gurney quickly, yanking the tag from his toe with a huff of agitation. Emery moaned and tried to swallow, but his tongue had fallen down his neck, toward his chest, limply from the base of his lower jaw. He could hear the sound her feet made across the cold floor. He could recognize that pattern anywhere. His ears knew his wife better than his other senses, perhaps. She came into view of his remaining eye.

"Stop this. Leave him be," Beth said, removing the gag from his mouth. The surgeon watched her with a sense of quiet. Jamison, eyes glimmering with guilt and shame, stepped backward and left the scene. The cameras of this particular moment wanted her in full frame, and he exited when it was time, in the way subsidiary characters were designed to quietly step back forever.

"He's a good man," Beth said of her husband while looking over the ghastly Bernie Dozier and his bug eyes, the lanky antennae. She moved her look of reproach from Dozier to the surgeon, Merrill. Reproach was a somewhat maternal look, and when she offered them this look, it indicated they should have been mortified with themselves. Emery had never been so happy. Beth... sweet Beth would collect him up and take him home. It was too late for his mother; the circus of knives and grotesquery had claimed her. He was still alive, however. There was hope. He only needed his organs back, his excogitation node for his creativity, and his lovely, wondrous wife.

"Perhaps _you're_ in need of surgery," Lieutenant Merrill said to her. The students leaned forward at this, crowding the glass with a sort of academic anticipation. Dozier nodded emphatically, his antennae wagging in the air above his shrewd, exoskeletal head. Rebecca and Vivian, standing above, squeezed forward by the press of students, began to bash their faces repeatedly against the glass. Smudges of blood buffeted from their foreheads with each collision, leaving a red film before the obscured faces. Beth turned and shoved Dozier, whose insect body broke to pieces and scattered across the floor. The jaws fluttered and issued a final squeal of perish. The insects were many in the world, but so frail, so temporary. They expired with little qualm. There were more eggs, however. That was their strength, their temerity. There were mounds of eggs for every soul lost, if the insects had souls at all.

"Show him," Beth said to the surgeon. There was a moment of stillness as Emery tried to speak. He had nothing with which to do so. His lungs were gone and now the apprentice had taken his tongue.

"Go on," she repeated. Doctor Merrill sighed and slowly removed his surgical mask with blood-soaked hands. The man looking down at Emery was the confederate, the lieutenant. The mustache was tapered into the long beard and the war-weathered face imposed a sense of both despair and wisdom. Emery looked upon his old friend with sadness.

"Stop it," Beth said to the confederate, "He already knows that. SHOW HIM. He's earned it." Merrill licked his lips a moment and then lifted the scalpel, drawing it from his right temple down the side of his face to the chin. The blood ran and stained his shoulders, inching down his neck and dripping into Emery's cavity. Merrill then did the same with the other side of his face. There was a moment of uncertainty where Beth gave him a glare, and then Merrill reached his fingers into the cut, grasping the face. After a roll of the eyes, he tore it loose and Emery saw the man behind; the new face was an old one. Had the Lieutenant been this man from the start?

"Go on, make him right," Beth said. Henry Asher sighed in his blood-stained surgical gown and then slowly set the excogitation node back into Emery's body. The apprentice began unscrewing the lid to the jar that contained Emery's pale heart.

"Em, honey," Beth said, reaching down and shaking his arm. He glanced upon his wife as his father, Henry, glanced upon Susa. The things love did. The utter depths to which the mind could creep in order to surprise a man, the lengths to which a heart would go in making a man do anything to protect and take joy in those who loved him, those for which he would do nearly anything. Henry was a butcher long past, one that had been regarded in his town with much relevancy. He had been a good father and a strong husband turned away, in time, by his children, and then coldly taken in his sleep. Emery was a writer being crushed that wanted only to be known in his town, to be a good father and a strong husband, but he had turned away from his family. Perhaps he deserved to be taken in his sleep. The harder he labored and the more sweat he poured, the harder he failed and the more distant he was from all good things.

"Your brother," Beth said, "he wants to talk to you."

Yes, his brother, up above and watching the dissection with the students. Perhaps he would come down soon and spend time with their father. Emery opened his eyes then and swallowed, running his hand over his chest in bed. Beth knelt beside him.

"Nuh. Good morning," he said, groggy. The little terrors were worsening of late, and the cancellation of his show was beginning to play into the nature of them. Emery looked up at the students of the surgery suite and saw only the light fixture. At least this one hadn't taken place in the gulley, hadn't kept him near the man at the end of the bayonet, though that man had been present.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"I'm fine. William called?"

"Yes, from Miami. He's on the phone."

Emery nodded and sat up, but this was automatic. Several seconds were a start to looking about, to being in a room with windows and bedding. Beth waited as the realization of a call from Miami so early in the morning reached into him. His eyes lifted to full function and he crawled from the bed in his underwear. Legs stiff, he hobbled over his shoes on the floor, nearly falling to the side before making it to the bedroom telephone. He blinked hard and lifted the receiver to his ear, slowly rubbing the grit from his eyes.

"William? You there?" he asked. Beth stood in the room and watched her husband.

"Yeah. No, it's grainy but I can hear you," Emery responded, "Listen, I've got unexpected time off, uh, a lot of it, so I'm flying out again tonight. I'll be there early tomorrow morning." This was a slight attempt at hope on Emery's part.

There was a moment's pause before he slowly turned his head and looked at his wife. He said nothing. She tried not to look at him with inquisitiveness, to be less present in the room, but could not. She suspected. There had been a tone in William's voice when she first picked up. She had understood that tone. Beth remained in the bedroom as the span of seconds, seeming to be buried in decades, washed over the morning, and she waited for her husband to hear what she knew was being said.

Emery's head dropped and he placed a hand over his eyes. She moved and, standing behind, put her arms around her husband. The entirety of the world passed by beyond the house, in the workings of sky and ground and Hollywood, through windows, television screens, in the eyes of those who learned of terrible things on continents adrift. He began silently to sob. She held her husband and said nothing while time ate up the past and breathed, while the world was disembowelled and perished at the hands of the present, always expiring, always introducing, taking fathers and mothers and making more, every moment the spark of a transformation against all the backdrops, act after act. People became echoes. The world was wondrous and ruled in moments. The world was also cruel and governed by chance.

The air tangled to a hush and the daughters in the living room played.

**Chapter Twenty**

With warfare in the oceanic wilds of the Pacific, and maneuvers beyond the scope of his training, Emery had dropped from Skytrains with the frequency of a squirrel leaping boughs in a tree. With intimate matters, especially those involving the deaths of certain friends and family, Emery had always moved quickly, dislodging from his grief and rushing toward anything else. The passing of his father had come to him in the form of a letter, short and haggard, from his mother. It had been a heart-attack in the night, and the funeral for the father had occurred weeks before this letter ever reached either of the man's sons. With William in Italy and Emery in Leyte, and with their mother in Ohio and their father now gone, though weeks back, there was little anyone could say or do. The funeral had been short, on a Wednesday afternoon, and neither boy had known about it. Consolation did not exist much for Emery. With his mind pinned against the fulcrum of maneuvers, his heart shoved down in his gut and constrained by the necessity of cleared thought and focus amid the howling of the world and its killers, he had been robbed of his ability to mourn. This was a sensation taken out of him and placed in a box, to be opened in the future, but a box soon forgotten in the onslaught of offensive efforts. What could he do? The death and burial of his father had occurred long before he was told.

He had repeatedly fulfilled orders and there had been many easily-lost lives to accompany. This was charged as defending the innocent, bracing one's fellow soldiers, promoting that well-regarded freedom from which his country had imbibed so much. The orders were at times reprieving, but not often; they were scripts from Command, outlines from a distance, and they would always find their way to him. Maneuvers seemed hungry or else without care, sending him further into that stream of escalating danger. Emery had often been charged into places where there may have been enemies, then beyond, into places where there would certainly be enemies, and then further still, into the depths of foreign islands where the very folds of the land were known to be crawling with the enemy.

Each order sent him into a greater heat of combat, a bloodier, more exclamatory mode of surviving, and worse, each order brought him in contact with enemies that were growing more accustomed to the American system of military reaction. The Japanese had begun to know the approaches and where to lay wait. The worst was that Emery might have been killed without even knowing it, as had happened to Private Dodder, who blinked into non-existence in a moment when all had seemed well.

The work of appeasing one's mortality, of living and thus following the next of Chance's orders, depended on muddy, internal variables. For Emery, the most important of these had been the ability to clear his head. In the slow hours, he would scrape the clay from his thoughts by focusing on the logic of troop movement and every plan at which he could grasp, giving him the clarity to maneuver and act during the quicker hours. He kept other things from his mind, for fear he might go for a walk and get lost again, dreading that his demotion into the demolitions squad would become permanent. He needed to keep his head nearby and not let his ruminations overtake him. He had to foster stringency in himself, and not allow those moments of idle thought to compel him a fantasy or three. His mind could romanticize or go cloudy, and it could do this with much speed if not monitored. He was already in trouble; he needed to keep strict with his thoughts.

Emery had been denied the means of grieving for his father. He had received a letter only, and it had registered as something he would handle when he was not guarding his life. The loss of his father would be something to experience honestly and terribly, but later. When he returned home, however, back in his country and with the war having been pushed close to an end, he was not himself. His pulverized knee had begun the long process of a more permanent recovery, and there was worry about his future, and difficulty with the previous year, and in the force of these dilemmas, the natural death of Henry Asher had seemed already to be a distant memory. The loss almost seemed to belong where Emery had first learned of it, back in the Pacific with all the other sad departures. Not a full year had passed, but the death of Emery's father had occurred in a previous era.

The nature of Emery's culpable memory however, and the horrific medley of repugnancies the world had offered him, would not give him relief. The morbid things built themselves and grew limbs, infiltrated his sense of how people interacted, and struck him in the odd hours of the night, distantly in the future, whether sleeping beside Beth in bed, or sitting upright with his hands across a typewriter. The greater sadness was that these memories were hungry. They begged to be rummaged through and twisted, viewed through the day's prism and filtered for whatever color and substance might be gained. They returned often and new thoughts were built from them. Emery did not grieve; the troublesome thoughts and memories did not find a decent place in him. They ripened with time, discharged pus, were let loose to culminate and bleed into the other parts of his mind. Some reached deeper than others.

In being so potent and concentrated, the memories of warfare had trampled his memory of Henry Asher. That death was inadvertently placed into a storage bin of awful events, one that had been labeled: Deaths, Wartime. There were so many. A man you shot at a distance was set down beside your father in this place. All were dead. Gone. The same. Their meanings and memories suppressed one another due to proximity in having happened in the atrocious days. In not addressing these figments early, they could now overwhelm him, and with ease.

Susa's death had brought on a charmless, bitter Emery. Beth found herself walking with care when he was near, which was constant, owing to the cancellation of the show. The eager moments, when the fog of his mood separated enough to glimpse the man she loved, occurred only when the telephone rang. Emery would rush to the call and talk fervently with whatever sort of person had sought him out. This urge to work and have the next thing underway was crumbled quickly, as if a manifestation of his posture, when the call would turn out to be someone wishing to give condolences on the loss of his mother, and not an offer for the work he sought. His mother was gone, but he could not let her vanish so easily, and so she was placed with her husband in the bin. Perhaps he would dote on her in the quiet of the subconscious.

The weight of a certain world had rested on his shoulders, and he had performed as an Atlas well enough, but now that this weight had been removed, he had begun searching for more of it with desperation. He was as if a despondent, motherly cat whining through the house at odd hours, searching for the litter of babies taken away from her and sold too soon. The demise of his mother had twisted this search into a sort of self-oppression. His dour mood and increase in drink were self-energized punishments for having failed family, his work, and himself. In an overly-creative mind, the world was a monster where reward, escape, and punishment were often one, eating and breathing as a single, demanding entity.

The funeral was quiet and more than sobering. There was talk of blood pressure, the mention of a 'better place', and stories of the past. This was a wall he stood before, staring, as if down into the casket, itself. In the rare moments when Susa and Beth had been granted the chance to be alone together, to talk and exchange musings in the past, Beth had discovered something of unusual interest: William was nothing like Susa, but Emery was every bit his mother's boy. The sensitivity in humor, which was slight but always keen, and her physical habits... brushing her thighs quickly as if to remove any dust before crossing a street... these were available in Emery, and made much of his personality.

The trouble was that Emery did not know how to settle with the deceased. Beth tried to reach him in these matters, but Emery was not present where those talks could be born. The funeral came and went, and for it, Emery came and went. He consoled others, but not himself. He attended the service and wake, spoke much with his brother, but not once mentioned his mother or father. The sole subject of this funerary process was the only subject for which he had no opinion to give.

Both of his parents were now gone, yet he tried to hold so little emotion. He seemed almost to dismiss the funeral as being unimportant. This was a mood both his brother and his wife noticed, each exchanging looks with the other. When it was over, Emery began swerving frantically in other directions. He inundated himself in projects, working over his second motion picture for Pacific and nagging himself over his typewriter while trying (and failing) to transpose the elements of _Coronach_ into a live theater format. Beth knew what this turn in mood meant: Her husband was overwhelmed so far in it might never come out, and he was a man who could disguise things within other things without even knowing it. He was a perfectionist in many ways, but kept certain things unresolved in that same, perfection-making way, to keep them alive, perhaps, shut-up somewhere and hived away. During the funeral, Emery had almost seemed to judge others as weak for shedding tears over his mother. He had that look on his face, the smug, holier look. There were times when Beth had a very difficult time loving him.

There had been several job offers over the past month, these wanting him to monologue over moments of shows, mostly as a gag, which he found silly and vain. One persistent group however, called him numerous times in a single week and wanted him to advertise soap. They had asked him for a full year's endorsement campaign spread over six commercials, along with the right to use his image in print-ads: _When you want clean, only Lennox knows the formula for scrubs with suds._ He had told them he needed time to think over their offer. This was a lie: He would do it if he couldn't find real work soon.

Emery began disrupting things at home, complaining about dinner or what was on television, disliking the light bulbs, and interrupting various conversations to express his dislike of the conversation at hand. He seemed also to have become a depleting sort of father; he both cherished and seemed insulted by his daughters, loving them but seeming oppressed when they wanted his attention. This came out in strange tantrums of quiet, during which he drank much. She would come to realize that Emery's troubles had done more than trample him; they had left him beleaguered by regret and self-loathing. She would see in his future stories a timid man disguised as a bold one, trying hard to release what he could of his mother, to free his memories and view of her from the stony bulwarks of his guilt.

This had a beginning in loss, and if Beth knew her husband on page, in the new and short scripts he had been writing, she would have found a different man than the disruptor who drank in his chair before the television. She would encounter this other man off page, in time, but for that month following the funeral, Beth had known an Emery that disturbed her, a flinty man that seemed to be dragging his motives and thoughts far behind him. Beth's husband was still a boy, really, one that wrote out his worries and fears and adorations in a late-night diary full of codes, parables, and the hidden directives of his chosen fantasy. His more hidden thoughts and emotions made their way into scripts with regularity, if one knew where to look. His psychosis was an utter fear of losing the good in his life, while paradoxically keeping these things at a distance. Perhaps he needed a doctor with which he had not exchanged vows.

Over the following month, Mrs. Asher kept her hands busy with the girls, and Vivian's 2nd birthday had proven to be a wondrous relief. The writer had left his busy typewriter and dull eyes for an entire day, and for once in a long while, he had been himself again. Vivian's utterance of a profanity at the end of the day had even culled a laugh from him. A genuine laugh. The Belmonts came by and Larry's presence seemed to relax Emery. When Larry and Helen went home for the night, Emery's cheer was strong and he spent some time in a nice conversation with his wife. The two of them felt warm, and it was good to talk together, as so little of this had lately occurred. This closeness would prove short lived, however; at three in the morning, she woke to discover him missing again. The clatter of keys in the kitchen, where he had returned to work, was an attempt at capturing his earlier sparks, an attempt of finding work after the cancellation, and this kept her discomforted and brimming with a sigh that was always on its way to her mouth, but never quite reached the teeth. His mood was low again by morning, and remained there.

CUT TO:

INT. A BALLROOM - NIGHT

We see a broad room with a well-lit floor, but the ballroom is empty save for a Mark V 500lb. demolition air-drop bomb, standing on its struts (about 5 ft. tall) in the center of the room. It is simply present in military olive, its designations and information stenciled in black along the body.

Strauss' Lagoon Waltz begins. The waltz builds quite slowly in volume. We focus on the bomb in the ballroom's center as the room goes dark and a spotlight fades on, highlighting the explosive. We pull toward the spotlit bomb until we're in a medium shot. Beat. From the left, out of the dark and into the spotlight, steps HENRY ASHER wearing the sort of suit in which a man might be buried. His face bears the traces of funeral parlor makeup. He stops just before the bomb, in the spotlight. We see him check his watch and then remain stationary, waiting.

Slowly, we see SUSA ASHER, also in her funeral clothes and burial makeup, step in from the right. HENRY extends his hand over the bomb, and SUSA takes it. They move toward us then, about two feet, and come around the front of the bomb, arranging themselves for the dance. They begin to waltz to the music.

We get a POV from HENRY, watching his wife as she dances with him. We cut to the same shot from SUSA's point of view. The two dance slowly to the music. Stepping into the spotlight at the rear, behind the bomb, is SOLDIER ASHER, Emery wearing his demolitions uniform and gear. He stands there, looking back and forth between his parents. The music stops. HENRY and SUSA continue dancing the waltz, seeming pleased with one another.

We have a close shot where we can see the upper halves of all three in the spotlight, then the two dancers leave frame to the left and right, leaving only DEMOLITION EMERY as we slowly tilt upwards. EMERY's head finally descends out of frame. We continue tilting upward until we can see the spotlight-maker itself, a glow of bright light that we begin moving toward. We draw close and the spotlight comes into focus. It is a television in the ceiling. We have a slow zoom to the program being aired on it. The Other Side is on, with HOST ASHER giving a monologue we can not accurately hear. When we get to ECU, the television abruptly cuts to static and stays that way. We hear the obnoxious sound of television static.

Slowly, we pull back, tilting, until we return to the original shot of the three, but there is only EMERY present, in his pajamas, looking tired and haggard. He stares down at the bomb. The static is loud and aggravating.

CUT TO:

The passage of time, accountable as a construct of myriad moments, yet with moments from the unknown. Short periods full of events and, at times troublesome, non-events. Emery did only what he could, pouring the coffee down, the whiskey down, breathing the cigarettes and waltzing with the clock in his study. For the Asher family, the end of this period of trouble, this time of a distant husband and terse father carried away into his moodiness and work, came in the middle of August, when a telephone call ruptured the home's melancholy and roused the invaginated writer from his creativity's drunkenness. Bernie Dozier, a man whom she had yet to meet, and one with which she hoped never to shake hands, had called to explain his own hard work over the summer, and that he had managed to acquire a second season for _The Other Side_.

Emery's elation came later that night, once his baffled and bitter rant over network bureaucracy and groping pseudo-demographic had abated. Bourbon helped in this, and Beth chose to aid him in celebration, giving a physical element to their happiness. The laughter and warmth served as a breaking of "the Emmy hex", as he had come to describe his recent bad fortune.

The news had come, and he was in it again. Emery was above the water and would now gain speed. That night, they had a celebratory few hours over at the Belmonts' house (Calvin Moffat had been there, as well, bringing with him a rather ugly dog he had just purchased). After this fun evening, Emery and Beth returned home, dismissed the sitter, and then invited a thing into their bed that had not visited in months: Intimacy. They returned somewhat to the poses of thought and expectation for which they knew one another to hold. Was it really so simple? Work made the man happy? They seemed again to be the sort of couple they cherished, and the past months of Emery's shame and moping melted into a conglomerate murkiness they both brushed out the door along with his short-lived coldness.

Emery made a short promise to her that night, aloud and with the sound of realization, that he would not allow himself to be so troubled by bad news again. There was also an apology. This came from the top of his head, but had an element of charm in it, and thus, it felt well-written. This annoyed her, but the apology did seem sincere, and it was quickly accepted. Somehow, though this change in weather was pleasing and needed, Beth felt it a little unfair. The trouble had ended with what Emery might have called a _deus ex machina_.

His work began immediately. He improvised outlines and would write episodes until summer's end, which was quite near. Production on the first episode of the season was to begin immediately. This evidence of the fates had conspired Emery to his fruition again, and his eyes lost the silt that had overcome them. Beth had been given her husband back, which of course was a cruel trick, as having him back meant losing him to work again. She supposed she would prefer work to bitterness, if one of those had to be in play. The fashion of their marriage had embraced absence in the past, and it would again. She found it an ignominy that the only time the girls had enough time with their father, enough presence with him to get to know the man, had been during that unemployed summer when his mind and heart had been amidst so much wreckage of expiry and occupation. The daughters did not know the fun, charming man their mother did.

Beth vowed to change this relationship between father and daughters. For better or worse, somehow, Rebecca and Vivian were going to be given more time with him. Whether this required pressure on Beth's part, or her downright intrusion into his work schedule, she would force it to happen. The girls deserved it. Emery deserved it. For the daughters, this would begin in the form of visiting the studio and seeing daddy at work on the weekends. Perhaps that would be a decent start. Beth brought up this idea several times, and eventually, Emery reluctantly agreed to try it.

"Beth, we swear like sailors, and a lot of us blaspheme, and I'll be running crazy, ordering everybody around all day. It gets stressful on set and it's fast and everybody has a part and there's a lot of yelling when someone isn't in the right place at the right time. We're mangy; it's a place for dogs, honey, not little girls."

"Then swear, Emery. Bark orders, you wolf. They know you're at work and they'll be fine."

The cancellation had brought to life every bit of failure he had long dreaded might one day come for him. The irony was that he was now often recognized in the streets and in restaurants due to his appearance as the host of the show, and while there were some that would refer to him in these moments of recognition as 'the _Other Side_ guy', most did seem to know him by his name. He had become somewhat popular in presence, as well as in certain writer circles. Never had he been so liked, and this had caused him the sensation of acclaim, the kind he could bite down on and truly taste. That the cancellation happened at a peak of this fan demeanor, just after receiving two Emmys, had been both startling and cruel, and now that a second season was in the works, he wanted to move forward as quickly as possible.

The fans were ancillary, and always present. The studio had concluded that the fans of the show made up a small group of people, without the power of a united lifestyle or age. This was not a demographic studios sought. A scattering of fans, even a massive scattering, seemed diminished and appeared minuscule to a network. The fans had to have an age or gender or class in common, to count with the network. Networks looked at the mortar, not the bricks. When several major newspapers reported the cancellation of 'Mr. Emmy's new show', the fans came out in droves. They sent letters that were likely thrown out without being read. They met and discussed how to get the show back on the air. In one odd moment, two young men knocked on the Asher door to express their condolences. What Emery at first thought were two strangers kindly referring to his mother's death, ended with a stroke of gratitude when he discovered their agenda: They wanted the show back and had simply thought to say as much. Emery had been pleased to tell them that the show was, in fact, being given a second season, and that they'd soon be tuning in at 8 p.m. Dozier had managed something amazing, and while this news had made Emery happy, the two fans at his front door had re-impressed upon the writer the reason for his work. He had almost forgotten that he wrote for others, and that they noticed when he did it well. The network had changed him over the past year; he would need to make sure that did not happen again.

Bernie Dozier was not so much a whale as a shark, and only in rare moments. He chose his battles with caution and much planning, it seemed, and when something struck him as worth assault, he moved with the pressure of those many others he could sway to his side. This was the way _The Other Side_ had gained new life, and the pressure under which a second season had been granted. Dozier knew people and was fond of doing favors for them. He rarely collected on these, but if there was a demand, he could pressure and, ultimately, cash in as he needed. The workings of Bernie Dozier would not have succeeded however, if it were not for the catalyst of the show's audience, which proved to be far broader than the demographic for which the studio had aimed. The most vocal of these fans were young, male, and of the college age, but the greatest number of _letters_ coming in were from housewives. CBS had underestimated the cross-genre appeal of the show, but caught on quick once the first news articles began to circulate (one of Dozier's tactics that had worked wonders). Emery was both elated and frustrated with the network, and though his mood was in the stratus over a second season, he was troubled over the granting of that second season after months of having been dismissed without so much as a thank you. In the end, Dozier had struggled to bring the show back, calling in favors and waging a strong yet quiet media campaign, but Emery's return as head writer was waged more by the fans, themselves, than by any producer.

The cancellation had removed Emery from contract. He did not need to return to the show any more than a person needed to reinitiate a love interest with someone that had previously abandoned them. The truth was that Emery would have traded every one of his plaques, certificates, and Emmys in exchange for more fans. Acclaim felt to him far greater than any other sort of prize, though often called these into being.

Dozier had been right when stating Emery need not worry for work; the offers had taken some time to begin, but they started coming in at nearly the exact moment the second season was granted. At times, the world preferred to throw someone everything at once. He was asked to write a picture for Sandal Studios and offered a job as one of five writers on _The Cattlemen_ , an early-evening western that was somewhat popular on a competing network. One of the offers was peculiar and struck much thought into Emery before being declined, and this was an offer to weekly guest lecture for a scriptwriting course at Los Angeles University. This did appeal to him, but he did not feel ready to leave the active business of writing for television, and in his mind, a guest lecturer who wasn't also working in his field was a sad thing to be. He did accept the Sandal picture, and had a year to write it, but declined the other offers. They did not have the feeling of being approachable, and his home, for the time being, was on set and before a typewriter.

FADE TO:

INT. THE BALLROOM - NIGHT

We see the empty room again, but it's dim. The Mark V demolition bomb is still present, but not the Ashers, and not Emery. It is quiet. We remain in a long shot as, suddenly, the television spotlight comes on above, lighting the bomb below. The static is quieter, due to our distance, and shortly, the channel is changed. We hear the opening credits of The Other Side. After a moment, we hear HOST ASHER speaking from the television program, his voice tinny and reverberating throughout the empty ballroom. This gains in volume as we watch the bomb. The monologue seems to be a medley of statements and lines from various episodes. It has no real bearing or specific meaning.

Into the spotlight, from behind, steps HOST ASHER in his usual, hosting suit. His hair is slicked back and he seems about to address us. Three teamsters enter frame, carefully lift the bomb, and exit with it, leaving us only with HOST ASHER in the bright light. We hear the nonsensical monologue from the television as HOST ASHER stands there in the spotlight, looking nervous and never at us, as if in guilt. We hear the television close the piecemeal monologue.

TELEVISION ASHER:

He is a man unlucky in life but lucky in love... a woman with a particular fascination... Pilots in the midst of a difficult maneuver and running low on hope... two children who are about to take a very long sort of nap, only to wake up on... The Other Side. With nowhere to run and his soul on the chopping block... please take into consideration... on The Other Side on The Other Side we call this story, The Silver Tongue, and it comes straight from the twisted hands of fate on The Other Side... tonight we have a tale that... where the best one-liners come from... so stay with us as we show you a little something about faith... on The Other Side.

FADE TO:

Reading aloud to himself, Emery studied into his more acclaimed works for marrow. Each new script had to sound right, feel strong, and convey the thing with more than a gimmick, but with intrigue. He was eager to search hard for what had made certain previous scripts work, and others falter. The season line-up was uncertain, but he wanted to make certain he had material for anything that did not fetch the program's scattered fans. In just three weeks, his show was going back on the air, using the season one finale, which had never aired, as a sort of re-launch episode. Emery had four weeks to ready another episode, or risk falling into re-runs for a time.

The other jobs had started heaving in like a tide. News of the cancellation had taken a couple of months to spread, and now the job offers were coming in, right when he no longer needed them. A strange development had occurred in that people seemed to want him as a bit-part actor, instead of a writer. Very few wanted him to work with scripts, and those that did only wanted the speculative arena in its basest sense. They asked for more science fiction and horror, yes, but far less drama, and certainly no presentations that might contain moral. They wanted mummies and flying saucers, not allegory. They wanted image over wit, with a touch of shock, stories of various people that faced an ill fate, but without the reason for that fate.

Many of the offered projects failed to understand wanweird, or his stylizations, his conceits, and even his means. This, in itself, presented a story in which he played protagonist, a story that at times found him wreathed in sardonic self-disgust, and at other times, tittering from the mistakes of his fellows with a jocular dopiness. Many writers were now killing off characters as a somewhat meaningless pacing device. These writers weren't unemployed, however. Emery needed to remember that.

There was a new contract for _The Other Side_. Creative control still belonged to Emery, but this meant every bit of trouble would still belong to him, as well. There was a fresh title animation with an altered introduction to be recorded. Emery wrote it the night of Dozier's telephone call. There were A-grade actors lined up for episodes, fantastical scripts written by Larry Belmont and Calvin Moffat, with well over half the season written by Emery, himself. Orson Banry's episode had been put on hold, much to Emery's dissatisfaction, as Banry wanted to keep giving it attention, and was dragging his feet. The episode was no longer slated, but would likely air in the third season. With the exception of Banry's episode, all the work they had done in pre-production for this season had been completed before the cancellation, and was now available again, or at least, for the first six episodes. Some of the personnel were busy on other jobs and shows now, so some hiring was going to occur, but the executive producer would handle most of that. Strangest was that the network had decided, with the backing of Dozier, to film half of the season on videotape. Emery was worried about this, and through some complaint, managed to talk the network down to six episodes on videotape, rather than half of the season. There would be problems with the format, the first and most pressing being that videotape looked like garbage, and removed the possibility of shooting on location. This would prove simply to be one more thing Emery needed to weather and handle as it came.

The cancellation, though brief, had staggered the show, but only a portion of the summer, some personnel, and a month of much-needed pre-production time nad been lost. Beyond lost time and resources, Emery was forced to agree to a new clause stating that some of the episodes would be shot on videotape. The scramble was about to begin, but Emery was more than ready. The month of his bitterness had served as a sort of forced, tragic vacation, but he had written much. The second season would be much better than the first, and he knew how things worked with more scrutiny now. He knew how to work with Jamison, how to handle Dozier, where to spot a Warren Tult, and when to give Belmont and Moffat power in an episode.

There was a slight trouble when Emery learned that Jamison had not yet agreed to executive produce a second season. Emery didn't like Sol, but the man had backed him when it was needed, and Emery had grown accustomed to Jamison's strange, bossy aspect and his ever-blanketed personality. Dozier was certain Sol would come aboard shortly. The only major change to the season, provided Sol came back, would be the first episode, which Emery dismissed after notice the season was going to happen. Between the cancellation and the re-assertion of the show, he had written several scripts, and one of them was a better story for which the season could embark. Emery wanted it to pass the "Belmont Test", a private phrase he had concocted in the first season, and something Emery had found was useful to him, as quickly as possible. The Belmont Test, or, what Larry thought of a story, was most accurately an indicator of a fetching story when it was waged in the rough phase. He had to go over a story close to the beginning stage or else the Belmont Test was largely useless: Larry liked nearly everything once it was polished.

"What's it about? Ah, I think you'll like it, Larry. I'll have it over to you tomorrow. It'll make a good lead for the season, because this season's a little darker, no thanks to you. Here's what I've got in the rough: We start with a woman at a funeral who believes she can hear the voice of her deceased sister, who's about to be buried. That's all narrated. So we get to the funeral and the majority of the first act is the service, and the woman keeps hearing the voice. We hear it, too. The pall-bearers bring the coffin to the plot, and there's the priest and all, then the coffin is set in the ground. But the protagonist can still hear her sister's voice coming from the coffin. It's a faint, uncertain sound. We hear it, too, of course. Should the woman say something? She's certain she hears the muffle of her sister. The coffin is then buried and they relocate to the service.

"We've got our commercial break, and then the second act has the family telling stories about the dead woman. They reminisce and we learn that it was a car accident. Through this, though, we learn that the dead woman is the twin of her sister. The protagonist and the dead sister are identical twins. And of course, out protagonist keeps hearing her sister's voice, but she can't understand the words through the coffin, and now, through the soil. It gets _more_ muffled as we go, but we still hear it. By the end of Act 2, the sound of the sister's voice has become too much for the protagonist to bear, which results in her screaming out that her sister can't be dead (also, because they're twins, we start to realize that the voice is the same as the protagonist's). The onlookers at the service are startled by the shouting, and they try to subdue her. She insists she can hear her sister. Her own husband has to hold her down while a doctor examines her.

"Commercials, then the third act: We're several hours later, and our protagonist sits at home, lightly sedated, and her poor husband is still trying to keep her calm. She seems almost mad, now. She keeps crying and muttering that her sister isn't dead. Her sister is talking to her, trying to tell her something (and we do hear the voice, and it sounds urgent, but hushed). The husband makes a phone call, gets the family together, and he's just _begging_ them for help. He doesn't know what to do. His wife is surely losing her mind. To mollify the situation, the family finally agrees to unearth the coffin and let the sister look inside. They don't like it, but they agree. So, we cut to the funeral plot, and the family is standing around, disturbed by the whole thing but feeling it's the right thing to do for the bereaved sister. The coffin is opened and they see the dead sister. Identical to our protagonist, but of course a different outfit. Funereal. But when the lid is open, our protagonist hears the message, and so do we, and it's completely clear now, we can finally understand the words we've been hearing from the start: _Let me go... let me go..._ It sounds emphatic and pained. And letting her go is the opposite of what our protagonist has been doing throughout the episode, and for that matter, us. The woman cries, but seems almost pleased. She is now able to let her sister go, having heard the ghostly message.

"Then the commercials, wrap-up monologue, credits. Done. A voice from the Other Side. I might change the message a little, but that's the gist of it. It's a dark story, for a little while there, but I thought I'd try on your shoes a bit, Larry. Just see what sort of story I get out of it. It still needs something, a b-story that culminates with the coffin opening somehow. Maybe something more about the sister who died, and the special sort of relationship the twins have had. I'll get to that in a second draft, though."

There were comparisons to family and closeness, to the manner siblings often shared a world their parents seldom grasped in the same way. A stronger element of the story came to Emery directly from the war, where a young man in his squad would wake certain nights, swearing that he had heard the voice of a friend interrupting his dream, a friend who had been shot through the head months before. The new episode was about mistake, regret, and taking the mere presence of others for granted. It mulled over the inevitability of a human's end, but the hope for meaning. It exposed the sense of abandonment, and the hope for a reprieve from the troubling rules of life, things in a straight line with his network situation. The tale cloaked the dead and their inability to give goodbyes. It gave light to the common individual who still needed those who had passed on, the individual who realized a new clarity of love and respect for these passers, but too late, without them, conscious of their own mortality and having to live on in some ways alone. Death had to be accepted for what it was, but doing so, truly accepting, was a fashion of thought for which not everyone was suited.

If only his mother could have seen it.
**Chapter Twenty-One**

Ray Lemar stood at the dealer table and waited, talking a bit with James Vance about the set and day's happenings. They waited with patience while Emery read quietly from a small card in his hand, a writer memorizing a paragraph of introduction he, himself, had only written the previous night. The show's introduction monologues were usually shot near the end of production, or else were written on set in the days before the opening shoot (some locations and allocated equipment required opening scenes to be shot first). The last thing written for an episode was the exit monologue, if the schedule allowed. This was Emery's preferred treatment, but there were times when his regiment became reversed due to weather and shooting schedule, or location. The actors were patient however, and Emery read over his introduction monologue a few more times while they waited. Lemar was staying in character, even.

With Bob Keith, Emery's preferred director, busy directing episodes of _Police Precinct_ , new blood would need to be drawn. Sol Jamison agreed to executive produce again, and with him came the suggestion of Buck Mifflin to direct various episodes. After seeing some of his work, Emery agreed, and the calls had been made, the contracts drafted. Buck Mifflin, the director of the episode at hand, _had_ worked on one _Other Side_ episode in the first season, though he had mostly overseen some alternate scenes after the primary filming had been shot by another director, Grant Metzger. It had been a temporary job, really.

Buck was pleased to be hired, of course, and had a keen eye. He had worked much in television, but of his credentials, the more useful and telling was that he had directed several episodes of _Tales of Tomorrow_ , which had run for a few years at the start of the decade. He was quite impersonal on set, and though his mood was generally serious, he explained himself clearly, when needed, and was not a difficult person with which to work. The moment his leash gained some slack, Buck's seriousness vanished and he became quite personable and fun. He was an interesting man, and had come with the foreknowledge that Bob Keith had been a big part of what made the shows good, and in seeking to establish himself on the program, Buck Mifflin had studied a bit from the Bob Keith style of things over the course of season one. Buck was adept at unearthing the various moods, it seemed. He might work out nicely, it seemed, and he was certainly efficient.

Emery continued jabbering his monologue to himself and, after a minute or two, Buck inquired as to whether Emery was ready or not for the rehearsal. The question was little more than a vehicle for the actual statement: Ready or not, rehearsal was beginning.

"Yes, I'm all set," Emery said, eyes still scanning his introduction on the card.

"Liar," Ray Lemar said. Emery smiled at this.

Having the girls visit the set at first seemed troublesome. Emery had tried to arrange it on a day with little shooting, his fear being that a scene might be interrupted by a cry from Vivian or question from Rebecca, which would put stress on Emery in front of the crew. He was also fighting his slight discomfort at looking hen-pecked. He was not that, but it would seem as such some of his crew. It was 1960 however, and with a new decade came new situations. This would be one of them, and he was willing to accept it.

Emery was not the man most others blamed when a problem occurred, but he was certainly one of the men people turned to when something was amiss. He did not create troubles for the production; he solved them. When Beth suggested (this was more an explanation of events that _would_ occur, rather than ideas for what _might_ ) that she and the girls would begin visiting Emery at work, he had tried in vain to dissuade them. It would not work out. The schedule was hectic enough without worrying about arriving family and their schedule, as well. After Beth's resolve proved itself shielded in the iron of her will, however, Emery conceded and attempted to arrange a simple visit that would not interfere. This had been a good negotiation on his part until the day of the visit, when it was discovered they would be shooting heavily due to a change in the itinerary of James Vance, who would not be available on Thursday due to a scheduled root canal.

Beth sat at the back of the set, behind the gaffer's riggings and the lined props for subsequent scenes to follow in the day's new filming regimen. She had a clear line of sight to the stage and, to Emery's relief, was not much of a distraction on the set. Rebecca and Vivian were behaving, and other than most everyone in the production saying hello and introducing themselves, the day was progressing without incident. The crew's reaction to his wife was cordial, but strangely intrigued. Emery surmised that the crew of the show might have previously seen him as somewhat of an enigma. The crew seemed so fascinated that he had children, so bizarrely intrigued with his wife. They looked at him, after the arrival of his family, with a sense of interest that was a touch warmer. Perhaps the all-business nature of his behavior while at work had conjured the notion of a cold persona. Beth and the girls were somewhat normal people, nothing outlandish in their appearance or presence, but the crew seemed to keep constant track of them, not to make sure the girls were out of the way, but because the crew members were interested and curious. This surprised Emery. They didn't judge him hen-pecked, but instead had found him more likeable. Had they previously thought him the sort who had no personal life?

Buck quieted the set and crouched down, rubbing at the fresh shave he had rushed through that morning, which was red and irritated, likely from rapid-shave powder. Clifford Bunn, a newer cameraman standing near Buck, zeroed in on his mark and waited. The light of the set dimmed and a greater light was activated over the scene, giving Emery his minor spotlight for introduction. He stood quite still and waited, his eyes adjusting to the light.

"Okay, Em," Buck said.

"We're ready?" Emery asked after clearing his throat.

"Yeah, we're go if you are." The set was silent.

"Let's start, then," Emery said.

"All right. Marks. In 3...2..." and he pointed at the cameraman.

The camera was not on him at the start of the shot. It would instead pan to him, giving a view of the casino behind. They had some real casino shots for exteriors, and a few interiors, but shots involving the blackjack table conversations were to be filmed on the constructed set. Emery covered his mouth and quietly cleared his throat again, quickly before the camera began to move, and, being out of the frame for a moment, gave Beth a quick wave. She smiled and returned the gesture with a genuine look of 'good luck'. Buck and Clifford spoke quietly back and forth, though most of this was Buck. Emery waited, holding still and watching the camera with his peripheral vision. This large, mounted device, not yet recording as they were but rehearsing, made a slow pan over the interior set of a casino floor. This particular shot should have been done in a real casino, but Jamison had been correct when noting that clearing a casino floor out for a shoot, even a short one, was an expense they could not wage, especially now that the bigger casinos were open all day, all night. The Vegas shots were done anyway, and there was no going back without substantially altering the budget. Jamison was that budget's dragon guardian.

When the pan was near complete, Buck signaled Emery, who stepped into frame to address the make-believe audience and introduce the episode. This particular story belonged to Larry Belmont, but Emery had written the introductory monologue, as he did with every episode. With the camera having reached its destination, he stepped into frame and began.

"Every soul has a blind spot. An empty place. Most people fill this void with hobbies and preferences, a love of automobiles, or the trait of a collector with various interests or habits," Emery said, keeping his shoulders steady and his head slightly cocked. He began moving across the active field, the camera following him to his second mark. He was to stand behind the blackjack table, as if a dealer.

"This hollow," Emery continued as he walked, "which is distinct and different in every person, gives us room in life to seek out and fulfill our vast interests. But there are those rare few who prefer to fill this bower with the abject presence of vice. One such man is Harold Butler, and one such vice is an addiction to-"

"Hold on. Sorry, Em. Wait," Buck interrupted, standing. Emery ceased and licked his lips a moment. He began bobbling on his heels, keeping his energy fixed while on standby. A quiet lull of activity began again and people began walking around the set quickly, trying to catch up between shots, especially if these shots were not real, but pantomimes done in stage rehearsal. Time for preparation was ending. They'd be filming within an hour, and likely much sooner.

"Cliff, is his hand staying in frame, with that gesture?" Buck asked.

"Really close to frame, but yeah," the cameraman responded.

"Okay, Emery, you did a movement with your hand and—"

"This one," Emery said, repeating his hand's motion toward the craps tables.

"—it puts your hand to frame. Uh, keep it closer to your chest or else just don't do the motion. However you want."

"I'll drop it."

"You could do it with your other hand, though," Cliff added. Buck cocked the cameraman a somewhat blank look. Cliff stopped trying to help.

"Okay," Buck said then, "Marks."

Emery stepped back into place and the two actors at the blackjack table settled, readying themselves for the cue. The director glanced around the set a moment, thinking. Emery had a glance at Beth. Her eyebrows raised were raised and she seemed curious and intrigued with how his monologues unfolded. He was a little embarrassed to be performing in front of her. She had seen many of his monologues on the air, through the protective distance of a television screen, and he practiced while at home, but this was the first time she had been on set, and viewing him in a professional light while he performed the physical brunt of it. She had seen the beginning and end result of the monologues, but never the work between. This felt as if he was showing her some secret spot in the back yard where he hid the extra money.

"All right, once again. 3...2..." Buck followed with his point to Cliff. The camera panned slowly and then Emery was given his cue. He stepped into frame.

"Every soul has a blind spot. An empty place. Most people fill this void with hobbies and preferences, a love of automobiles, or the trait of a collector with various interests or habits," He began his walk to the blackjack table, then.

"This hollow, which is distinct and different in every person, gives us room in life to seek out and fulfill our vast interests. But there are those rare few who prefer to fill this bower with the abject presence of vice. One such man is Harold Butler, and one such vice is an addiction to gambling. Tonight, however, Mr. Butler is going to discover an element of his addiction previous and morely unknown- oh, damn it."

He had lost track of his line and conjured a silly word. This was incredibly common.

"Morely?" he repeated, "Okay, morely unknown."

"Sounds kind of like middle english," Vance said from his mark at the blackjack table. There was good cheer on the set, as not much had gone wrong with the day and they were working on time, though quickly. Activity picked briefly. A technician approached the blackjack table with a gauge, aimed it at his lighting rig and watched for the indication that his amount of light had run afoul. He seemed pleased, however.

"Good first name for a henchman. 'Morely'," Lemar added over his shoulder.

"Hey, that's not bad," Vance said to Emery, "Make sure you take that back to the producers at Pacific. Give Lemar credit, though."

"All right," Emery interjected, "You see fellas, my family is here and they're stunning me and I lost track of what I was saying."

"Yeah, we noticed. Not you; I mean the family. Specifically, the wife," Lemar said.

"All right now," Emery replied in humor.

"We noticed plenty," Vance added. There was a surprise laugh from the microphone handler at this, which then dipped through the crew. Making a television show was not fun, until it was, even briefly. Beth pursed her lips in mock irritation.

"You see all this, honey? We're real professionals, here," Emery called out.

"This is a _good_ day for us," Buck added.

"So this is what my husband does when he's off at work. Messes up his lines," she said. The crew enjoyed this. Seeing Emery grilled by his wife was good fun. There were only a few people in the production that could get away with teasing Emery. Most of the directors could, and especially Buck Mifflin, as it was simply his character. Belmont and Moffat jabbed at times. The hairdresser, Nina, had a way of saying silly things about a person and getting away with it. There were smaller jibes from the others, if the mood was right, and the sets could wear a sense of playful diversion, at times. Quite a few others had attempted teasing Emery more personally, however. Those other people now knew better. Sol Jamison was one such person. Emery and Sol left one another alone as much as possible.

"Actually, I usually screw this up a lot more. I think I'm trying to show off," Emery replied. This was somewhat true.

The crew readied and Buck popped a pill, drank it down with a swallow of seltzer. He rubbed his eyes then and said something to his 1st A.D., Louis Reynold, who nodded and walked off in search of whatever Buck had given him to seek out. After a moment, the crew feeling a bit warmed by the foray of a few laughs, Buck called the scene forward. Emery checked his tie and waited.

Beth watched her husband standing there, at the edge of the false casino, his face still and eyes in thought. Just two months ago, he had been a slump of a man in his study and, often, the kitchen (where he preferred to work, despite having a sound study). He had spent months rifling through pages of type, distraught and overwhelmed in the stress of his mother's passing and the cancellation of the show for which he was now, again, in charge. Life was an odd beast, and the way it snorted and could be unpredictable and cross. Emery seemed pleased, and for this, Beth was able to rummage a touch of pride. There was an unspoken thing in her mind that was dissipating, something she could never have acknowledged aloud, and this terrible thing was that, during his unemployment, she had allowed herself to begin doubting him. She had since forgiven herself for this, but wondered if he would be so quick to forgive if he had known her thoughts over the Summer, if he had known the extent to which she had believed him fallen, and that she had presumed him finished with television, and perhaps writing.

Seeing him with his show again, writing and working, and smiling with a smidge of play, here and there, was a good way to see him. Life had rampaged a bit, but the tantrum was over and things were beginning again.

"Let's do the opener," Buck said. Vance and Lemar agreed and readied themselves. This would give Emery some time to work on the monologue and say hello to his family. Buck was an understanding sort, so long as a person didn't take it for granted. The crew readied for this scene's rehearsal, which would take place in the episode immediately after Emery's monologue. It was still the same shot, but later in the timeline.

"And we go in on Butler, 3...2... now the deal," Buck said, initiating. Vance, as Butler, lifted a dealt card from the table. Emery stayed out of sight, but near enough the scene to get its feel for the camera.

CUT TO:

INT. THE MAVERICK CASINO AND LOUNGE - NIGHT

A busy, well-lit casino full of slots and people and dealers and hostesses.

We focus on the blackjack tables, moving in until we see a DEALER (JIMMY) and MR. BUTLER. They are the only two at this particular table.

BUTLER glances at the card he has been dealt. We have an ECU of the turnout: Deuce and a five.

BUTLER:

(frowns)

Jimmy, you're killin' me. Ah, you're really killin' me.

JIMMY:

That's the breaks, Mr. Butler.

BUTLER:

Oh, I know the breaks. Uh, hit me again.

JIMMY deals another card. BUTLER glances at it and we have an ECU on the hand: Deuce, five, and an eight. There's a pause.

JIMMY:

Another?

BUTLER:

I can't get a leg up tonight. You're keepin' the royalty all to yourself, I think.

JIMMY:

Ah, I'm sorry to hear it.

BUTLER:

Sure you are. Well, it's not just tonight, of course. Poker. Blackjack. Roulette. Ever see a losing streak like this? Months.

JIMMY:

I've seen worse.

BUTLER:

Can't have been much worse, though.

JIMMY:

Not much worse, no. Eh, it's just a bad spell. When it gets like this is when a guy bounces back. You gotta be right next to it, by now.

BUTLER:

Let's hope.

JIMMY:

Hey, be sure to try me again tomorrow. Find my table. It's my kid's birthday; might have some luck in my hands for you when I get here.

BUTLER:

(a friendly nod)

Say, I'll do that. Couldn't hurt.

JIMMY:

(smiles)

No, sir.

BUTLER lifts his half-empty bourbon, ice long ago melted.

BUTLER:

Well, I think I've lost enough for the evening. Better save what little I've got left for another night.

JIMMY:

Good seein' you, Mr. Butler.

BUTLER:

Yeah, you too, Jimmy. Hey, at least buy yourself a drink with my losses, eh? Take a tip. I'd like to know SOMETHING comes from a losing streak this bad.

JIMMY:

I wish I could; can't drink until I'm off the floor for the night. As for taking a tip, well believe me, every last dime that comes near me is accounted for by management.

BUTLER downs the rest of his drink, then licks his lips.

BUTLER:

Well now, that's a good policy. No drinks while at the table. Maybe I should use it, too, huh?

CUT TO:

The set. A short reprieve of quiet. Buck Mifflin stood.

"And that'll be the cut. That was just right. Great stuff, you two. On the first run, even."

"Okay?" Lemar asked, peering around Vance from the dealer position at the table.

"Yeah, that was nice," Buck sated, "We'll top off a few more to keep it clear."

James Vance removed himself from the stool and stood up, rotating his shoulders to clear them from the previous posture of leaning against the table's rim. It was rather marvelous to see him take on fifteen years when the camera was watching, but then stand up after a shot, having returned to his more youthful self. He was a strong actor, had come from live theater, but was one of the few that understood how to re-work his technique for a camera, how not to overemphasis. Vance had been difficult to obtain, but he had loved Belmont's script, and signed on after a few details were ironed out. Lemar had been simple to arrange, having only worked in television and one film. Vance and Lemar did not seem to regard one-another much, but had a nice back-and-forth in the scene.

The real spark would be Death, who was being played by the gifted Tom Ward. Ward was the first Oscar winner they had approached who was fond of the show. So fond, in fact, that he signed on after being pitched a script, without having actually read it. His one contingency, beyond his schedule (which was awkward), was that, as Death, he not wear a black gown with a hood. Ward found this device to be dull and ancient when it came to acting and stages. Jamison, who had obtained Ward surprisingly fast, had assured the well-known actor that there would be no reaper costume. Ward would look like a well-put-together man of certain stature. It would not be a cliché wardrobe arrangement. Tom Ward had consented to the role and would be on set in but two days.

"We're on schedule; we shoot the monologue and opener in twenty. Let's get it right, guys," Buck announced then, "Em, you get your makeup on. I want to see out the monologue a few times before we shoot."

Emery brushed himself off and walked off the casino set, made his way to a chair near the side of the stage. He waved Beth and the girls over and then sat back as Nina knelt before him and began applying his makeup. She would place hints here and there of definition, and the wondrous, powdery layer of pallor the cameras preferred. Brightening the white made the black more defined. Darkening the black made the white bloom against a lens. Contrast was key, but always a work in progress.

Beth and the girls came over and Rebecca sat on the floor, beside her father's legs. He reached over and frisked her hair a moment as Vivian, riding Beth's hip, motioned to go to him.

"Oh sweetie, I can't. I have to hold still to get my makeup on," Emery said. Vivian did not register this bit of information in the technical sense, but the child knew enough of tone to understand her want had been declined.

"You have any trouble at the front gate?" Emery asked.

"No, they let us right in."

"Okay, good."

Emery, without moving his face, carefully lit a cigarette. The smoke rose from the tip, much to Nina's agitation.

"Sorry."

Beth described the day she and the two daughters had seen prior to arriving on set. It had been a series of errands with a stop at the park to play. She said he looked good in his suit, then. He inquired about his height and no, she did not feel he looked too short on the stage.

"Everyone says that, but I feel like a dwarf up there."

There was a small amount of conversation between the two, cramped and minor due to the proximity of Nina. Emery had a habit of affecting a mild tone when talking with his wife near others who might inadvertently listen, a sort of mechanism. Shortly, the director called for a ten minute curfew. Something was going on, but Emery did not know what that might be. Rebecca batted at her father's leg then, a bit annoyed at not getting much attention.

"So, have you decided what you want to do for your birthday?" he asked her.

"I want a party," Rebecca said.

"I see. That's an idea I can get behind. Who are you going to invite?"

"I don't know. You. And mommy. Viv."

"No one else?"

"Girls from my class."

"No boys, huh?" he said with a tease.

"There's a boy, because you're a boy and you'll be there," she replied.

"That's more observant than you know. And I would love to attend a pretty girl's birthday party. I thank you cordially for your invitation."

"Is this your story, daddy?" she said then, changing the subject while looking at the stage.

"Oh," he said, surprised she would ask something regarding the script, "Well, not this one, no. This one Larry wrote. You remember Larry and Helen?"

"Uh huh."

"Larry writes stories, too. That's our job, here."

"I know."

"Ah, good. Well this one is all Larry."

"What's it about?" Rebecca asked. Beth smiled at this and sat down beside her daughter while trying to balance with Vivian. This was one of those moments she found touching, but Emery was not present in full, being much more at work than at home.

"Well, it's called _Losing Streak_ , and it's about a man so addicted to gambling that he's ruined his life. He's had a bad run. That means he can't win at gambling. Which is something... something you should never do. Gamble. Bad habit. But the main character, the man who loses in the story- his name is Mr. Butler. You saw him up there, on the stage. In the story, he keeps losing at gambling. Almost all of his money is gone. It's very sad and he's very lonely. He just can't win. The thing is, after leaving the casino one night, the night you've just seen on the stage, Mr. Butler sees a quarter on the ground in the street, right out in front of the casino. He's happy to see that and says 'Look there. Free money. Maybe my luck has finally changed,' and he stops to pick it up but he isn't paying attention, and a car hits him."

"He goes under a car?"

"Well, not under. He gets hit by it and bounces off. Just out in the street. And the driver panics and doesn't want to get in trouble, so he leaves. He drives off quickly and Mr. Butler is badly hurt."

"Does he die?"

"That's the thing. At first, we don't know, because he wakes up after a moment and he finds himself facing a strange man, a real big shot who turns out to be Death. Mr. Butler is _almost_ dead, see. He's scared, of course, and he begs Death to spare him, to let him keep living. He says he's willing to make a bet with Death. Well, Death is intrigued enough to hear him out. Mr. Butler figures that his losing streak has to be over, that getting hit by a car must have surely drained the last of the bad luck out of him all at once. He challenges Death to a game of blackjack. If Mr. Butler wins, he gets to live, and he won't be injured from the car. If he loses, he'll die, but the stakes have been raised, because Death will make sure he dies very painfully. That's the bet. Either he beats Death and lives, or he'll die in terrible pain, and not quickly. And then Death makes the rule that they'll play five hands only. If Mr. Butler loses to the house, it's over."

"Does he have red cards?" Rebecca asked.

"Red?"

"The cards on the set have red backing," Beth threw in, "she saw them."

"Oh, I see. Then yes. He'll have those red cards. Both of them will. Huh... maybe I should change that, so they're not like the casino cards, or maybe... Eh, at any rate, on the final hand (that's the last part of the game), both Mr. Butler and Death have won two hands. They're at a tie. So it's all down to the last hand. Death flips and deals. Mr. Butler hits, hits again, and ends up with a great hand. He's got 20. Uh, in blackjack, the goal is to get as close as you can to 21 without going over. And Death, with 17, draws another card and gets a 5, which gives him 22, and so he's busted. Mr. Butler wins the game."

"He wins?"

"Yes, and he wins the bet."

"Then what happens?"

"Death leaves and we come back from commercial. Mr. Butler steps into a bar and orders a drink. While he's there, he sees a slot machine against the far wall. He thinks about his night, and he's still got that quarter he found in the street. So, he argues with himself a little, and then decides to gamble the quarter. Just one pull at the slot machine. He puts the quarter into the machine, pulls the handle, and loses. He gets nothing. That's all. We end with a sad man who just can't win but for the one time when it counted the most."

"He's cheated death, is the main point," Beth added.

"Well, I suppose, but without actually _cheating_. The connotation would be different because it's blackjack. He plays fairly and his luck starts- oh, wait wait," Emery said, trailing off. A moment passed while he thought and nibbled his lip. Rebecca had lost interest.

"Okay, hold on," he said, excited.

Beth watched as he reached into his pocket, carefully so as not to trouble Nina and the appliance of his makeup. Emery obtained his tape recorder and, holding it near his mouth and with his cigarette in his free hand, depressed the record button.

"Uh, this is for the close on _Losing Streak_ : 'No, you can't cheat death. But in Mr. Butler's case, maybe, just maybe, it's possible to beat him without cheating, and when playing on _The Other Side_ ' _..._ no no, 'but _only_ when playing on the-" He stopped there, pausing the recorder. Emery thought a moment, and then began recording again, "Okay, 'It's possible to beat the dealer if you're playing on _The Other Side_.' Oh, scratch that. 'No, you can't beat the house and you can't cheat death. But in the case of Harold Butler, maybe, just maybe, a person CAN beat the house, even against death, himself, if one happens to be playing... on _The Other Side._ ' Nope. 'If you're hand has been dealt from... _The Other Side_.' Work with this later. Also, change the color of cards that involve the bet with Death. Death should have his own cards, I think. Black ones. Or maybe go with white. Really white. That could be good."

Emery moved his finger and there was a dull snap as the record button jutted upward, ending the recording. He chewed at the inside of his cheek a moment while Nina applied his foundation. Beth nodded, slightly irked.

"I do like that part about not beating the house or cheating death. And the last one with the hand being dealt from _The Other Side_."

"Oh good. I have a line about it already, but I'm not happy with how it sounds. Sorry for jumping away like that. If I don't record something fast-"

"I'm well aware of your secret love affair with the tape recorder," she said. Emery smiled.

"She means so little to me, honey. It's just an occasional rendezvous between a needy man and a lonely machine. A trashy sort of affair, really."

"Mmm hmm."

"Well, either I talk all day into Edison's toy, or instead it all builds up and I end up talking all evening in your ear."

"Oh, keep your little mistress on the side. It's fine. She's pretty, yes, and I could say she's even demure, but I don't really feel threatened by her."

"You're very understanding."
**Chapter Twenty-Two**

Among those creative with words, those who wrote out their notions in novels, scripts, in comics and comedic routines, there were always a few flies amid the steak. Larry Belmont and Calvin Moffat were culpable blessings to the show, but the celebrated novelist, Orson Banry, had become a problem. Banry's work with television was sparse; he had penned a few scripts before, and one of his screenplays had been made into a film, but Banry was a novelist in both spirit and output. Emery had waited for some time, and Banry, a celebrated writer of fiction, had been dragging his feet the whole way. When the final revision was submitted, retracted, and submitted a week later, it was but one more of his incidental trickeries. Banry truly did not seem to know how to write a script. This had happened several times, and Emery had grown tired of waiting for the story. Worse, when the script had finally been delivered, after the long wait and incessant problems, it was even more problematic than the original draft Orson Banry had retracted a year prior. The script was based off one of Banry's short story, _I Speak of Arms and a Man,_ and the script had kept the title. This was a story that Emery had read in the past and enjoyed much, but Banry simply could not script it well, which, while at first surprising, had now become a thorn in Emery's side. Banry's unreliability, specifically while under contract, was proving to be a gauntlet of minor squabbles and unfulfilled deadlines.

Orson Banry, while being esteemed on page and well-regarded in the science fiction world, had put together a teleplay that did not fit the show much. It neglected the space for introduction, did not break well for the three acts that would edge the commercial breaks, and the summary came on too suddenly, at the very end. Emery was thrown-off by Banry's final draft, at how carelessly the writer seemed to have constructed it. Worse, Banry had removed several of the key components of the story, and inserted new ones that were not as effective. Banry had seemingly spent more time on these drafts than Emery would spend on an entire year's provision of scripts, and Banry had rewritten the "final" draft many times before submitting it for approval. This was a script from a capable writer, yet despite the skill of its creator and notwithstanding the time spent on it, Banry's script was strangely amateurish. If Emery had been in a bad mood while reading it, he might have even concluded the script to be downright awful.

In the end, with swollen heads butting and words quickly escalating into minor venom, the two writers, giants in their respective fields, had begun to dislike each other much. Emery's respect for Banry was strong, but annoyance was beginning to cloud his view of the man. Banry's respect for Emery, however, had utterly vanished. The script, in view of being filmed for television, needed to be overhauled. Emery, prizing what he suspected to be Banry's great skill, had asked the author to do the rewrite, and did not want to have his own writers patch it up, out of respect, but Banry was now refusing to do anything at all with the script. This left Emery, Larry, and Calvin, in the position of re-working the script themselves, as was the nature of their position with the studio, and Emery's production role with the show. Banry had been paid at the start (at Emery's novice insistence), and now they needed a shootable script.

Emery had been very cautious with Banry's story, changing nothing but directives and removing a small bit of tertiary dialogue that was not needed. If this had been his own script, he would have changed much more. Being that Larry Belmont had come from Banry's Orange Grove writers group, Larry brought the retouched script to Banry for his approval (out of respect and as a sort of peace-offering, for the author's approval was no longer necessary). Banry disapproved of the changes and spit out a series of insults aimed at Emery. Larry defended his employer, suggesting that perhaps Orson was being stubborn and needed to think over the changes. Banry, tested thus by one of his Orange Grove writers, exclaimed that Larry was trying to make him a Boo Radley. When Larry protested this and again tried to promote reason, he found himself shouted out of Banry's house as having become an "instrument of the machine". Banry then promptly wrote a cold and inflammatory letter to Emery. Worse, Banry began squealing charlatan throughout his Orange Grove writers group.

Soon, Orson Banry's arguments and inciting remarks made news. Banry had been disgruntled and was loud enough that his remarks began reaching his own fans and, in one particularly snide attack, he stated during an interview: "Emery Asher is a mercantile man with commercial-grade interests, and _The Other Side_ is a means for him to sell his face and his awards. When he's grandstanding for the camera, keep in mind that he might not have written the episode you're watching. I like Asher, but he isn't a writer so much as an announcer." Banry's injured whininess had a hidden fang, it seemed. The interview ran in Life magazine, and was stylized through the haphazard perspective (and headline thereof) that Emery Asher somehow thought Orson Banry was "not skilled enough" for _The Other Side_. Emery had no choice but to try and move past this, to go on with the show he was known for and put Orson Banry's esteemed squabble as far behind him as he could.

To counter those journalistic rumors of Emery's arrogance, and quell the smearing Banry had started, _I Sing of Arms and a Man_ would be shot and aired in the third season, and until then, Emery tried to get his dilemma with the famed writer out of his thoughts and regimen. He would deal with the episode when it was time.

CUT TO:

INT. SOL JAMISON'S OFFICE - DAY

The office is quite small, and has but a desk, chair, and several filing cabinets. There's a small hole in one of the walls, a hole that is mostly covered with a vacation photograph of Sol and his wife standing on a city corner, the Seattle Space Needle in the background.

SOL is standing near a wall, examining the picture, a blank expression on his face. We see him take a deep breath and then slowly let it out. He seems distant. There's a knock and he turns his head toward the door, then makes his way to his chair and sits down.

SOL:

Come in.

EMERY enters with LARRY. They close the door behind. Due to there being no other chairs in the room other than Sol's, the two writers stand before the desk.

LARRY:

What's buzzin', cousin?

EMERY:

Morning, Sol.

SOL:

(with a distant look)

Sure, good morning. Look, Variety just ran another interview with Mr. Novel, and I have to know, how far is this Banry prick going to take this? This guy's mouth opens and it's like the back end of a damn cow. You know him, Larry. What's it gonna take to get him to shut up already?

LARRY:

Ah, this. Listen, it's like I told Em, I don't really know Banry that well. I wish there was something I could do to help out, but I just don't know the guy.

SOL:

You were in his group. You've talked to him before, I'm sure.

LARRY:

I joined his writer's group a year ago, went to a half-dozen meetings, but he was only at four of 'em, and he just talks a lot, mainly about things he doesn't like about publishing. Sometimes movies. Honestly, I've only spoken to him a couple of times, and never longer than maybe a few of sentences. He hates me now, anyway.

EMERY:

Orson Banry is full of hot air. He'll blow out soon and we can shove all this behind us.

SOL:

(seeming to focus more)

It's hot air in Variety. In the Los Angeles Times. It's hot air that can burn us. Christ, Asher. After that shit he said in LIFE, you should have put on war-paint. Take some fucking initiative and handle this. You barely made it back for a second season, and this jackass is loud enough for the network to hear, you understand? You need this to go away. You paid him and he couldn't provide; he either has to pay you back, or shut his mouth.

EMERY:

I agree.

SOL:

Belmont, I want you to go talk to him. Pay him a visit, see if you can calm him down. Explain our side of things.

LARRY:

Sure, I'll do it if I have to. But I don't think he's gonna listen.

SOL:

Yes, you have to. Go tell him if he wants this network to keep an open mind regarding his writers, he'll let business be business and stop making things personal.

EMERY:

I'm not sure a threat is in order, Sol.

SOL:

(annoyed)

Oh, what does it matter, Asher? When you let a guy like this run his mouth, like you have, he only gets worse. Get that through your skull. This prick will badmouth us until we do something about it. That's how these people are. He's the one pushing us to see what we'll do. He's asking. So we'll tell him.

LARRY:

Uh, Mr. Jamison, I don't want to threaten the Orange Grove like that. I don't want to be the guy. If you're gonna do that, fine, but the messenger should be somebody else. Do it by mail, or call him on the phone. Executive producer carries clout. I mean, Banry's an ass, but he did help me out when I didn't know how things worked out here. I don't- I don't want to push him around.

SOL:

(angry)

How many threats do I have to make today? Do it tomorrow, Belmont. Go to the Emmys tonight, look pretty, clap for whatever monkeys they get up there, and then tomorrow, bright and early, handle Banry. Tell him it's all on me. Tell him I'm the reaper. Tell him I'm crazy and want blood. I don't care. Just cut the power to his mouth and protect your job.

EMERY:

Sol, what's gotten into you?

SOL:

Everything. I don't like you, Asher. And I don't like your writers. Creative control... what a gut pig. As far as I'm concerned, the two of you are babies stuck on my doorstep and I don't have the tits for it. I'm tired of dealing with other people's mistakes. I'm tired of everything. No one is accountable anymore and nothing counts. It's infuriating and if you want to keep this show, and I know you do, you'll take my advice and you will fucking handle this guy. I'm trying to teach you how to fish, you get it?

LARRY:

I'll do it. I'll just- I'll go out to his house tomorrow morning.

EMERY:

(with distaste)

Thanks for your support, Sol.

SOL:

You have no idea how bad it can get for you, Asher. I've been holding up the dam to keep your little flowers safe and you're thankless for it. About everything. The dam is gonna break sooner or later, and you, Dozier, your writers, that Mifflin, any of you guys... you have no high ground.

EMERY:

Neither do you, but don't take your bad mood out on us.

SOL:

Us? What, we're a family? There is no 'us'. For the record, Asher, and I want you to take this to heart, let it rattle around in that arrogant little head of yours: You're alone out here. You understand? Alone. Everyone is. Make a plan B, watch your ass, and either get used to it or get the hell out. Deal with your own problems or fuck off. That's all the advice I have left for you.

FADE TO:

The Emmys. The heat in the audience was sweltering and stardom, it seemed, bore with it a peculiar sort of stench. Emery sat with Belmont and Moffat, wishing there had been enough room to bring Beth and the girls this year. They would be watching at home. Maybe they would see him in the crowd, wave at the television.

Not being nominated for the Emmy in the second season was unexpected, as the directing, acting, and writing were all of a greater range than the first season, and the crew were getting good at finding the nuances that made the show worth watching. Emery was not so vain as to believe he deserved another award, and he had discovered in himself somewhat of a disregard for them. He considered them cohorts in keeping his name in the hat, but had learned they could not stop a show from being cancelled. He now considered his Emmys to function mostly as a bonus to his resume. The reason he hoped a nomination would occur was more due to the hard, strong work others were putting into the program of late, and especially the work of Larry Belmont. Unfortunately, three of the episodes shot on videotape had been Belmont's, and most of the staff, and possibly the Emmy nomination group, felt the episodes looked like garbage (a result that made Buck Mifflin, the director for most episodes of the season, furious).

Larry had been turning in fetching, excellent scripts. The younger writer deserved some recognition. Calvin Moffat had three episodes in the season, and they were good ones, but Belmont had begun to demonstrate an ability to rise quite high in the game, and he was no longer emulating Emery's previous scripts, but branching in his own direction. This was rapidly becoming an excellent direction. Larry deserved a bit of award, but this might have to wait for another season, another show, perhaps the next probable point in Belmont's career.

"Listen, Larry. I'll go talk to Orson Banry tomorrow. You shouldn't have to do that."

"Thanks, Em. But no, I'll do it. It should be me."

"Are you sure? I could go with you."

"He hates you, Em."

"That's true."

The Best Writing Emmy went, surprisingly, to _Major's Mission_ , a farcical serial about World War I, and a ramshackle group of men that were all, to general estimation, bumbling and inconsequent. The show felt almost as if the network was trying to shoot the comic _Beetle Bailey_ as a prime-time, television event, but somehow hadn't been able to secure the rights. As comedies went, the show was not so bad, but being awarded an Emmy was unexpected, and it shocked just about everyone. The directing was adequate, but the writing was poor and hackneyed. If an Emmy needed to be given to _Major's Mission_ , for whatever reason, it would have been better suited for the director, who showed a fair skill, and not the writer, who exhibited little talent.

Calvin Moffat had turned and mouthed 'What?" to Emery when the award was announced, and Emery had widened his eyes and shrugged in response. That the writing for this comedy had won an Emmy was right out of left field, and even the applause after the announcement seemed confused and hesitant. The writing was stilted, gag-oriented, and did not change much between episodes, often re-using various jokes in a given season. Emery's surprise at not having _The Other Side_ nominated was not as great as Jamison's, however, and in a sort of strange solidarity with _The Other Side_ , Sol Jamison did not attend the Emmy awards. This was arrogant and grumpy, Emery thought, and so he resigned himself to considering Jamison an unrepentant stick-in-the-mud, and going on with the fun time of the award ceremony. Of course, _The Other Side_ had won two the previous year (a situation that had never occurred before, with any show), and this undoubtedly played a big part in who had been nominated this year. There were politics involved, surely.

When the statues were depleted and the faces of the audience had grown tired and antsy from sitting too long, the show closed. The members of the audience made their way outside, some to valets, some to the vehicles that crowded the surrounding parking lots. The public waited outside, attempting to get a word with various personnel and familiar, televised faces. This was somewhat new. There had always been a degree of recognition and fan-dodging after the awards ceremony, but the crowd of these waiting devotees and hobnobbers had ripened over the years; they were now au fait with the awards, and their numbers had grown with sincerity. Emery twice found himself cornered and unable to move, fielding brief and playful answers to people who recognized him as the host of _The Other Side_. Some of these people were the quiet, staring sort, and amidst these, one could detect the sneaky presence of other writers, here and there, among the waiting fans.

When another writer approached, as an unknown, the questions were sharp and difficult to toy with on the spot. Emery wished each the best of luck, and quickly continued inching his way past the groups. Beth held his hand, staying beside him, a bit startled and put off by the situation of forced milling with strangers, but the fans were tolerable in that, once Emery made his route clear and asked them to make room, they did so. In the coming years, he thought, the studio might find it useful to designate some police in accompanying show personnel to award ceremonies, or at the least, a security agency.

"KEEP IT COMING, ASHER!" a young man shouted.

"THANKS FOR WATCHING!" Emery called back.

Belmont and Moffat followed Emery through the crowd, amazed at the presence of so many people who enjoyed the show. While they were not recognized, and had no screen-time beyond those fun moments when they were placed in costume in a crowd scene, they were most certainly privileged to the warmth of the show's reception. Moffat couldn't remove the legitimate smile from his face, and Belmont looked over the crowd as if he were a child glancing from the window on his first ever flight in an airplane.

Over drinks at the Philadelphia Street Café, a large, confusingly named bar in south Hollywood, one that was neither a café nor located on Philadelphia Street, the small after-party for the Emmy ceremony was in full swing. With the bar closed off for the night and reserved by specific television producers and chosen friends, many had gathered and were having a night of celebration. Only one winner that night was present, but there was much fun in the air and the noise of talk was an incessant effect. Emery and Beth sat at a large table with Larry and Helen, listening as Moffat, in an energetic mode of thought, commented to his group that if he had any brains, he would have run off for the night with one of the beautiful female fans that had made such delightful comments when he was exiting the ceremony. The only unmarried writer, and in fact, one of the very few unmarried members of the production, Moffat had many stories to tell regarding his bizarre exploits in Hollywood. Beyond his partial catch-phrase of 'these Hollywood girls are out of their minds', usually uttered at least once with each tale, he was also quite apt with describing or improvising his stranger meetings with studio executives and various actors. Moffat had a surreal gift for live storytelling, and Emery had been caught more than once in the position of being unable to turn away during one of Moffat's tall, Los Angeles tales.

Emery and Larry had been known to tell an autobiographical story or two, as all writers did (and some to an obsessive fault), and director Buck Mifflin was nearly a legend for his outright lies when it came to talking about his past, but Moffat had a special gift for relating himself to others. His gestures, voice, the way he built up over time... it made every outing with crew a strange delicacy, and got Emery thinking about possible future shows, and how Calvin Moffat might make his own sort of excellent host, one day, perhaps with a comedy. You looked at him and you wanted him to make you laugh, right there on the first word. It was that simple.

Beth and Helen arrived shortly, as was the arrangement. Emery and Beth sat at the table in the cafe, discussing the night and various other things with Larry and Helen, while Calvin stood nearby, having stopped his trek to the bar for a moment upon overhearing Emery mention the name of a club downtown.

"Gunner's? Naw, you don't want to go over there. That's no good at all. Place is muy annoying. It's all free jazz. There's nothing worse," Moffat said.

"I've been there; I sort of like it. It's relaxing," Emery replied.

"With one guy diddling a bass while another guy blasts you with a sax? Get the rest of the band and we can talk. Two guys? It's worthless."

"You just have to sit back and listen. There's a weird charm to it."

"Em, without the presence of other horns and strings-"

"It's about mood. It makes a _mood_ ," Emery added.

"No way. There's no singer, they're missing instruments," Moffat went on, "It's like this: I'm pretty sure that the lone squeal of a saxophone... is the _exact_ noise a hemorrhoid would make, if its terrible little sting could be represented by a sound."

"Oh dear," Helen Belmont said.

"Okay, changing the subject," Larry jumped in, "Cal, go get your beer. Em, I want you to tell Helen about your movie idea." Larry was hovering over his third beer, sitting beside his wife while leaning back. Beside him, Helen's interest lifted with the mention of a movie idea. Moffat stuck his finger in Larry's ear, much to Larry's surprise and feign of annoyance, and then removed himself to fetch a beer.

"Which one?" Emery asked.

"The one with the chimps," Larry said.

"Oh, it's just a story I'm sort of playing around with. I didn't write it; it's a book I read last year called _The Passing of the Hand._ By Didier Lisle, a French author. I just want to script it for film. Pacific wants their third script by September, so I'm trying this one. I've got the whole summer to flesh it out more."

"You read French?" Helen asked.

"It was written in English," Emery clarified.

"Yeah, but the characters. Tell her about that," Belmont returned.

"I see. Well, it's a whole world populated by primates. Almost the entire movie would be actors in bulky costumes. They'd have to be in costume the entire shoot.

"So the characters really are chimps?" Helen asked.

"Apes, actually," Emery said.

"But that's what they are? The whole movie is apes?"

"Uh-huh," Emery replied, feeling his rather foul-tasting martini gestate in his stomach. It was proving a mistake to have switched from wine during his previous order.

"What kind of movie is it? A funny?" Helen asked. Beth yawned and blinked a moment, trying to keep alert. She was getting tired.

"No, it's an action-drama. A scientist lands on a planet that's ruled by apes. He's human, by the way. The protagonist. But the apes talk and have armies and fight with one another and whatnot. And there are people on the planet, humans, like us, but the humans are all enslaved. Most are too stupid to wear clothing. The roles are switched, see? Apes are in charge. Men are the animals. But our man is from Earth, where it could be said that men rule over apes. So he's out of his element. It'd be like an ape landing on Earth in a flying saucer and being able to speak and escape and do everything we can. Maybe even a little smarter than us."

"Emery, that's just absolutely bizarre. Is it in Darwin's evolution?"

"Well, evolution has occurred, yes. But it's not purposely Darwinian, or connected to that particular man. The story is about people, or apes, being unwilling to accept their heritage, or that it could ever change. Stubbornness and egocentrism. You should read the book. I'll get your worse half a copy and have him bring it home sometime."

"For stubbornness and ignorance, maybe you should do a planet of mules," Beth threw in, joking.

"Or network heads," Belmont added.

"Naw, mules would be too hard to costume, and network executives couldn't run a planet without sponsors, and I don't feel like writing about an entire civilization built by Sears." Belmont found this idea amusing.

"Wait, wait. You could have a story where companies and stores run for office, you know, like whoever wins gets to run the U.S. economy for a term. And the states are all separated by allegiances to different competitors. Like Macys runs the east coast, but Sears runs the west coast."

"Well then you'd end up with the east coast being better dressed, but the west coast having nicer lawns," Beth said, picking up her energy a bit and joining the conversation.

"Oh god, where's my tape recorder when I need it?" Emery asked, raising his hand and getting the attention of the cocktail waitress, beckoning her over to order another.

"It's on the kitchen table at home," Beth said with mischief. Emery looked at Belmont with a slow nod.

"The reason she thinks that's funny is because I promised I'd leave it at home," he said.

"I don't know how you can use that thing," Belmont said, "Paper and ink, Asher. Worked for Shakespeare. You need to get back to your roots."

"Sure, Larry. You go ahead and toss out all your pens and make yourself a quill, buy yourself a jar of stink and some paper about as thick as a car-door, and I'll admire you for your poetic sensibility."

"I think if I did that, I might respect what I wrote more." Emery laughed at this.

"All right, from now on, Larry only writes with the quill."

"Where does a guy go to get a quill, anyway?"

"I think you have to yank one out of an actual turkey."

"Hey, there's a farm just off the highway. That's it, then. I'll do it. You will now address me as a bard. Wait no: Scribe," Larry said.

"Done. And for every story you can finish the _traditional_ way, I'll show you the thirty I finished with my tape-recorder and typewriter."

"Hell, you probably would, too."

"Keep the horse-and-buggy; I'll stick with the jetliner any day."

"There's a metaphor. I've been waiting for you to rattle off a few of those. Took what, three drinks?"

Moffat was following the cocktail waitress, attempting to talk to her, but this ended up bringing him back to the table of his coworkers.

"Uh, bourbon on rocks," Emery said to the waitress.

"Just a chardonnay for me," Beth said. Helen didn't order anything and Belmont thought it over a moment before deciding he was finished with alcohol for the night. Moffat was most decidedly not.

"Two greyhounds. Stiff," he said. The waitress gauged him a moment.

"How about one at a time, sport?" she offered. Moffat waved his hand with a look of frustration that broadened into characteristic charm.

"Whatever you say. I'm in your hands." The cocktail waitress made her way to the bar, unable to hear Moffat's next statement:

"I'd prefer it if you were in mine, though." Helen chuckled and batted a light fist at him. The writer put his arms up defensively.

"Well, I haven't met the right girl yet. Only the wrong ones. You wouldn't believe how many wrong ones there are, too. Los Angeles is overflowing with the wrong ones. I'm swingin' wild, here."

"I'm afraid you're going to _keep_ swinging wild if you're only looking in bars, Calvin," Helen said.

"That's true. Maybe I should try church. Girls still go there, right?" Emery laughed at this.

"So what religion would you decide to affiliate yourself with?" Emery asked with a smile.

"Uh, hell. I don't know. Who's allowed to drink?"

"Most of them."

"Yeah, okay. Then those. I'll do those."

"All at once, huh?" Belmont chuckled.

"A guy tryin' to sell a script goes to as many studios as he can, right?" Everyone laughed at this.

After settling and approving the arrival of their drinks, the group sat back and fell into small talk. For the benefit of Helen and Beth, the three men tried not to devolve into talk of the show and the studio, but this was as if trying not to bother soil while driving a plough through a field. Very little time passed before they were palavering over the nature of Jamison's grim moodiness, the pratfall Nina had taken during the shoot for _Steadfast_ that knocked one of her teeth out, and the fistfight Mike Hardy, the set manager, got into after a minor automobile collision with a plumber while leaving the studio earlier in the season. Moffat finally put his hands up and introduced a new topic, regarding the three writers.

"All right, all right. Here we go: Best episode so far. Which one?"

This was a tough question. None of them wanted to pick a show they themselves had written, but there was much more to the idea of 'best episode' than the writing. Emery reached his conclusion first.

"Okay. _Back Story_ ," he said. Moffat nodded with enthusiasm on this answer.

"Yeah yeah, that was a good one. Brian Coulter can act. He can really act."

"I liked that one," Belmont interjected, "but I have to say, I think, overall, the best of everybody went into _Losing Streak_."

"That's your own!" Moffat said with a smirk.

"I know, I know. I just mean that Bob Keith was top form in that one, and the cameraman was... psychic. It's like the show filmed itself. The lighting, the sets, everything was just good. Really sold the whole thing. And James Vance? Damn that looked good. He hit every line like he made 'em up himself. Yeah, I wrote it, but even there, I think it's better than my other scripts."

"Really? You think it's better than _Cypher_?" Emery asked.

"Well yeah, don't you?"

"No. _Privacy for the Cypher_ was a home run. I think you're at your best when it gets dismal in there."

"Oh. Well thanks. That rather surprises me, then. You know how I am about horror."

"Why would it surprise you that I like _Cypher_ more than _Losing Streak_?" Emery asked, intrigued. Both were keen stories, but _Privacy for the Cypher_ demonstrated a uniqueness of writing that _Losing Streak_ did not. Larry Belmont was the sort of person who would recognize that, even in his own work. There were others who could have written _Losing Streak_ , and each to their own flavor. Only Larry Belmont could have written _Privacy for the Cypher_. Emery waited as Belmont paused, the younger writer's slight smile giving a twitch, thinking over his response. It was evident he had one, but was looking for the right way to phrase.

"Uh, well, everybody knows you like the losers. You know. You kind of love 'em."

"I like the losers?"

"Well yeah, for a protagonist. The guy that nobody looks at. Just... down on his luck. A lot of your stories have that guy. You got these regular joes that are down low and they want to come up... like sometimes criminals in hiding, or soldiers that... they get on the edge of losing it, people that struggle with where they came from, or... or else where they're headin'. That stuff."

"Do I?" Emery asked. He was no longer intrigued, but in a mode of self-inspection. This facet of his taste for protagonists had not occurred to him, and seemed unreal.

"Yeah. I don't mean that in a negative way at all. You just like what you like. It's like an outsider thing. You don't much write about the big man on campus, or the fat cat sorts of guys. The achievers. Or even the popular sorts." Emery grinned at this.

"You guys are having me on. _Beyond the Fence_ was about a profit-headed banker. Everybody liked him. I have lots of stories about achievers."

"Yeah, but they end up with split personalities or... you know, fates worse than death, the just-desserts... they lose during the story, and have to doubt themselves and do things to be something else. People that are successful on the outside, sure, but warped on the inside. If you write a success story, you usually always have something awful happen to the guy." Emery thought this over.

"I do pick on those characters a little, don't I?"

"I love it. When you do like a retribution story, those are the best ones. Some sneak or a cheat getting what they've got comin', made to fail, or even if you kill 'em off. Well, and then you have the stories about the little guy being given a shot. Those are always endearing. That's what we see with _Losing Streak_ , a guy on the bad end maybe coming around and having something go good, for a change. Just once. I wrote that one, but I just figured you'd like that one more because you like those sorts of characters."

"Nobody writes a sad-sack like you, buddy," Moffat threw in, patting Emery on the shoulder, "And also you have this thing where all of your male characters act like women, and all your female characters act like men." Emery's eyes widened and he gave a snort.

"Oh, to hell with you guys. I absolutely do not do that."

There was much in the way of drunken mildness after this, with several producers milling against the table through the hour to come, dropping small greetings and mentioning good work that might be had, or good work that had been done. Dozier arrived late, did not drink, and needed to leave soon after. There was a moment when the network producer spied the three writers at their table, and he seemed on the verge of approaching, but chose not to, leaving the bar as quickly as he had arrived. While Dozier did not give anyone a reason for his arriving late, or for his hasty departure, most suspected he was having trouble at home. There had been rumors in the past year that involved Bernie Dozier and a series of rather public dates with a woman not his wife. A new rumor had begun only days ago, that this woman was now his fiancée and that divorce proceedings were underway.

That Bernie was still married was a big part of the rumor's natural climax. It was supposed by most that the woman was dense and being fooled, that outside of work, and quite plausibly during work, Bernie was somewhat of a louse, and that his wife was either oblivious or on the verge of leaving him, if she hadn't begun this process already. Over the previous year, Emery had decided that Bernie Dozier was the sort of person no one truly liked, but pretended to for the sake of employment and ease of relation. It had been a productive year, and Dozier, despite his unpredictable demeanor and occasional misdealing, was someone to respect, not like.

### ***

It was just after seven the following morning when Emery opened his eyes to the ceiling. The telephone had been ringing for an unknown duration on the nightstand. Slow from the sheets and warmth, a bit hungover, he slid his arm from the bed into the cold air, made his dazed, numb greeting after tepidly lifting of the receiver.

"Nnn, hello?"

Emery clenched his jaw as Bernie quietly related the cancellation. The writer woke completely then, stood in his underwear, and did not try to stave off his sudden anger. When Dozier paused long enough to catch his breath, Emery expelled a great amount of grief and obvious vitriol through the receiver of the telephone. It seemed Dozier was a no-hoper, after all, a bankrupt executive clown with no power or degree of value. Emery and the others would not stand for the cancellation. Not again. The show was a huge success, and this was obvious. The actors were calling. The directors were keen to take a shot at a story. Jamison would fight tooth and nail for a third season, and Emery would be right there next to him. So would the rest of the production. If this failed, Emery would take his show elsewhere, somehow, anywhere. He could buy out the rights; change the name, whatever needed to be done. He would be rid of the unscrupulous impotency of all the Bernie Doziers and all their back-stabbing tactics. Emery promised this in a series of shouts through the telephone. Bernie took it with little qualm.

"And beyond that... goddamn it, Bernie, it's seven in the damn morning. You call me with this garbage at seven in the morning? This should have been handled in person, you louse. Is that why you left the bar last night without coming over? Because you knew about this and just wanted to call me at a _more_ inconvenient time, you inconsiderate ass? Have you already called Jamison or is he next?"

Beth was now awake, put off by her husband's shouting. Once she understood the nature of the phone call, however, she understood and quickly left the room. Dozier lessened his tone and began to explain the truth of his quick departure the previous night. There were two reasons for the telephone call. Relaying the cancellation was the lesser of them. The executive explained, neither with his usual defensiveness, nor the clear, brass-tacks approach of executive decision, but in a voice that came unexpectedly, riding an almost shameful tone.

"Em, they found Sol Jamison dead last night. Just before the Emmys. He was in his garage. He uh... he hung himself."

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

The eulogy was stark and simple, but contained in it those sparse details one accounts as the summary of a life. Solomon Jamison had been a man whose existence was peppered in certainties. For Emery, there was a chilling effect in hearing the course of this producer's life, as it mirrored his own in many ways. Beyond fighting in the war, Sol had boxed a bit, though before going into the ARMY, which Sol had done in his early twenties as a draftee. Sol had written two manuscripts, but had only shown them to his nieces. He had produced. He had gone to college and done well. Sol had no parents or grandparents remaining, just like Emery.

Unlike Emery however, Sol had married before shipping out for the war, had no children (though there had been a miscarriage). He had no living siblings. Emery underwent a longstanding shudder while the course of Jamison's life was laid out for the reminiscence of people who did not really know him. The manner by which the eulogy was given was brief, but effected heavily the sensation of the funeral and internment to follow. Sol had been right: The dam had broken utterly, over the course of many, lonely months, and the man had chosen to go with it.

She was not present. Sol Jamison was a married man, but no wife attended the funeral. This, to everyone present, was highly upsetting and somewhat scandalous. It came out shortly before the funeral, when talk of Jamison's suicide hit the crew and began to cascade from rumor into post-mortem fact, that Sol's wife had left him about four months before his death. He had been alone, a man that worked hard and yet personally stayed to himself, as much as one could on a busy production, and then returned home each evening to an empty house and what Emery could only discern to be an overwhelming isolation, shadowed in guilt and grief. Why had she left? Why was she not present for, at the least, the man's funeral?

No one knew why the marriage had faulted, or what had happened. Sol Jamison had not been the sort for extramarital shenanigans, and his temperament made him seem a person who would have valued loyalty and vow with much scrutiny. It was doubtful he would have had an affair. Had he been abusive?

There was a small parcel of information that came along toward the end of the funeral. This bit of story on why Mrs. Jamison was not present was given by Jamison's uncle, Ethan, an old and yet warm man who seemed quite accustomed to funerals, or at the least, un-phased by the accoutrements of them. This man seemed emotionless. The uncle relayed the information regarding the still legally bound Mrs. Jamison: No one could find her. She had left Sol and moved to Oklahoma, to be with a sister. Sol had not known of this, and instead had been told the two were going on a vacation for a week. Shortly after, the husband's calls to Oklahoma went unanswered, and the only way Sol had learned that his wife had left him came in a single, short letter wherein she explained that she would no longer be with him. There had been no return address, but the postmark had indicated Oregon. There was no family in Oregon, however. Where had they gone? No one knew.

In the Jewish tradition, the funeral was at first planned for Sol's home, but the missing wife and the fact that the home had been the location of his suicide caused his uncle and two aunts to schedule the service at a funeral chapel. Sol's Uncle had performed most of the shemira at the home, watching over the body until the funeral, as was customary, and had recited the various psalms in the process. At the end of the week, the body had been moved to the chapel. That Sol's family was so small had caused problems with the tradition of funeral, but relief had been given in the form of several visitors.

Emery wondered how awful the woman would feel when she found out, _if_ she found out. Emery clutched Beth's hand tightly during the service, thankful that the world saw fit to honor him in a companionship that wore such warmth and understanding, such love and care. What had Sol done to cause Mrs. Jamison to flee? Had she simply been a terrible sort of person, and Sol had been unfortunate, deserving better? Had he been an awful husband? Either of these plausibilities felt shattering to Emery, and they were difficult to keep from his mind during the funeral. He had made much effort in clearing his mind, several times during the service, and had begun to like Sol Jamison as much as he disliked him. This caused in Emery a bevy of odd and unmanageable reflections.

Jamison had only joined into television in the early fifties, much as Emery had, but the older man's temerity as a radio producer paved the way to it, unlike Emery, who's rise into the business had been as if on the back of an errant racehorse. Sol had worked hard, and luck had played so little part of his career. It was with time, a lot of activity and effort, that the deceased had established himself in his occupation. Sol had no friends, it seemed. The people present were producers and writers, various people from the few productions he had presided over, but these people did not seem to hold much sadness over the loss. They were more curious and stunned than else.

Bernie Dozier had not come, but this had been explained days earlier: He felt in part responsible. Bernie had called Sol on the telephone and informed the producer of the cancellation, before telling others. He did not want a repeat of the argument that followed the show's first cancellation, and chose to inform Sol without Emery being present. Dozier hadn't wanted the two producers ganging up on him in anger, if this could be avoided. So, Jamison had been informed a day before Emery, the morning of the Emmy awards. Emery and Larry had been called into Sol's office shortly after. The things Sol Jamison had said to them were cold, callous, and in view of the day's events, somewhat of a warning. Sol had chosen to give Emery some tough love disguised as an angry rant, before killing himself. An hour after his meeting with the two writers, Sol went home early to his empty house, had half of a drink, and then hung himself with an ironing cord in his garage.

Worse than the hanging were the scratch marks reported to be present along his jaw, around the long mire of the cord's strangulation path. Sol had changed his mind, it seemed. He had kicked back his step-ladder, dropped, concluded that he wanted to live, and had tried to dig his fingers into the cording, to pull himself up. He had chosen to remain. Gravity and weight would not be assuaged however, and now a group of onlookers, not so much friends, sat and listened to the sporadic, line-graph plots of his life being uttered through a cheap microphone, events that seemed of worth and the sorts of hallmarks that supposedly made a man what he was, or had been. These were events that were to be forgotten over the years, along with the man who had accomplished them. Sol had been but 46 years old, not even ten years Emery's senior, yet the man had felt to be at least twenty years more aged.

The notion of suicide was a circling dog in the minds of those who attended the funeral. At times treated as a great offense that denied one the process of traditional funeral, and at times considered a sad and terrible end worthy of forgiving, the stigma of suicide changed much in the meaning behind a person's eternal absence, especially in the Jewish faith. In this case, the small, surviving family of Sol Jamison had been quite adamant that he be given the traditional rites and interned as any other practicing Jew would be, despite that suicide was considered by many to be an unforgivable offense.

"The taking of one's own life is a grave sin, but this sin is an offense between man and God," the rabbi stated, "and for this tragedy we will inter Solomon Joseph Jamison into the Earth, that his soul be discerned by God and judged, and his body be joined back into the Earth. 'Despite yourself you were fashioned, and despite yourself you were born, and despite yourself you live, and despite yourself you die, and despite yourself you will hereafter have account and reckoning before the King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.' We will let this matter be handled by the two for which it concerns. As this is not an offense between man and man, so it will not be our place today to cast our judgment, but to render Solomon Joseph Jamison to the hereafter in the orthodox way, and send him to his greater meaning."

This was all that the rabbi mentioned of the manner by which Sol had perished. Emery had thought there would be more trouble, but those present had conceded to be kind. In the course of the remaining eulogy, several psalms were recited, and these were followed by the canter and Memorial Prayer, which painted the air in somber voice and the recitations of Sol's religious heritage. Emery knew the heritage well, but had left it many years ago.

Having attended previous funerals, Emery knew the body was to be lowered into the ground. He had watched with a sense of panic as his mother disappeared beneath the floor that all people had once walked, still did, or would walk in time. It was as if those present were putting the person away. In a box stuck under the house like old clothes or things one wanted to keep in some way, but had no time for, things that, in time, would be forgotten and finally discarded. This was a ridiculous thought, of course, but sadness brought out the unavoidable, tragic ridiculousness of so many things. Emery and Beth were not allowed to view the burial, having taken their part as non-family in the eulogy service. The burial was for family, but again, the small nature of this caused trouble. Volunteers from Sol's synagogue had been asked to carry the casket, and they did so, out of sight. Emery sighed.

"Baruch dayan emet," he muttered, speaking from old memory, an image of his father in his mind, "Well, let's hope, right?"

The clothes had been torn, the prayer given, the eulogy completed. Emery left the chapel with Beth in his arm, pondering the bizarre servitude a person underwent throughout a life. It was strange and spotty the way a man's deeds were rummaged through after he died. It was almost a cold bastardization, but somehow good, cared for, and for many, holy in nature. These thoughts confused him and caused him to clench his jaw tightly. He did not have a knack for funerals. They mortified and harangued him. He had trouble settling things into their proper order, understanding the notion of grief, which to him was a thing to cudgel and tread quickly, like a cut finger or damaged knee. Something to survive. To get past. This was at odds his sentimentality, however. The effect of a person's life being lost only exposed the hidden nerve most kept at bay, a trigger that squelched loudly and shuddered a person from balance. Funerals frightened Emery more than most things, and especially those funerals for men who were but middle-aged.

In front of the chapel, he lit a cigarette with a shaky motion. Beth took note of his nerves and said little, and though it was incredibly rare for her, she had a cigarette, as well. The two made their way toward the car, lost in their own thoughts and breathing the cool, summer air, nicotine settling their stomachs and nerves. The street near the chapel was busy, vehicles disappearing as sudden as they arrived, passing the funeral, the cemetery, the place where everyone would end up. It was horrific and frightening, and caused Emery to want to run, to shout from his lips the madness all were living and dying within, the stark and terrible blade they were all against, even in those moments most joyful. His fear of dying had become, over the years, a panicky obsession he did not want to indulge, but could not escape.

"Mr. Asher! Emery Asher. Hello there," a man said near their car. He was standing on the sidewalk and had been looking over the cemetery, smoking. Emery glanced him over and slowed.

"Hi. Jack Molson; I was a friend of Solomon's. Had some car trouble and got here late, and I didn't want to go in and disrupt the service."

"Oh, I see," Emery said.

"Listen, I recognized you and I just want to say that I've known Sol a long time, and he was a good man, always had a knack for working with the best, and you're certainly one of those. He had great things to say about you."

Emery blinked and stopped walking. Beth rubbed his arm a moment as he lifted his cigarette and had a drag.

"Uh, thank you. How did you know Sol?" Emery asked.

"We did _Pig Pretty_ together; few other things, too, but those never got to see the light of day," the man responded.

"Right, okay," Emery said, the name of the show sounding only vaguely familiar.

"But before that, we both went to Berkeley, had some classes together. That's where we first met. I've known him a long time."

"So, you're in the business."

"Yeah, sure. Isn't everybody? Hey listen, I think Solomon was on to something with your show, and I heard about the cancellation... I just want to say I'm sorry to hear it. I do think I know some people that could get that show back on the air for another season, if you'd be interested. Fairway Productions."

"You-"

"And, hear me out, I think it would be great to take part in that. There's- there's real magic there. My schedule's clear enough, is the thing, just for now, and I could step in as the new executive producer, keep Solomon's legacy going, you know? Like family."

"I- I don't know what to-"

"Hey, I know this is the wrong time to talk about that sort of thing. I completely understand. I just saw you there and figured I might not get another chance. And he liked you so much, you know? Think it over, is all I'm sayin'. I'll give you my business card and when you're feeling up to it, you can just give me a call. A show this great deserves—"

Emery's fist cracked against the chin and knocked the head upward, tossing the man's hat into the air. This hat tumbled over itself, seeming to ride the exact tremor contained in Beth's shout of surprise. The man's hands lifted as he fell backward, stumbling onto his ass on the sidewalk. In a grunt, he sat up quickly. He placed a hand against his face and rubbed, eyes wide and complexion flooding into lush red.

"Oh, you cocksucker," the man said. He began rising to his feet. Beth uttered something Emery did not hear. He registered the tone, which had as its base the sound of a plead. Emery stepped forward and used his foot to shove the man off-balance, back onto the ground. Beth grasped Emery's arm. The man was smiling.

"Honey, let's go. Just leave him." The downed man moved to the side, trying to get away from Emery's foot.

"A friend of mine is dead, you goddamn louse," Emery said, looking at the predatory man who, after this statement, stopped trying to get up. He sat there rubbing his chin and watching Emery with a focused sort of vitriol. When the funeral-shark gave no auditory response, Emery shook his head and flicked his cigarette onto the sidewalk next to the man, continuing toward the car with Beth.

"I just wanted to help, jackass," the man called over his shoulder, rising to his feet and dusting himself off, "And your pal Jamison ain't the only one gettin' buried in this cemetery, kid. Look around. Your show's got a headstone, too. And if I ever run into you again, so will you."

In a few moments, they were away from the cemetery grounds and traveling toward home. The shifter ground into third and caused the car to stutter. Beth reached her hand over and placed it on her husband's. The lay of the avenue was straight but congested, and he was driving in a mode both erratic and unnecessary.

"What a fucking snake. What was his name? You catch it?" Emery inquired.

"Yes, but would you please slow down?"

"Fine. I'm slowing down. There. Happy?"

"No, Emery."

"Well, I'm sorry. Damn it... I don't understand how a-" he paused for a moment to gather his thoughts and light another cigarette, one hand on the wheel and his eyes quickly glancing back and forth between his lighter's flame and the avenue, "Who does that? What kind of sorry parasite would do that?" He dragged several times to get the cigarette's cherry burning hot, then exhaled while jerking the window's handle, rolling it down quickly.

"He said his name was Jack something. It started with an M," she replied, nervous at the nature of her husband's driving, and especially his right foot, which kept angrily pressuring the pedal as if in enunciation of his words. Emery had a long pull on his cigarette and they began to creep in speed again.

"Yeah, that's it. Marston. Marshall. Mantle. Something like that..."

"Honey, please. Please slow down."

"I'm sorry. Okay. I'm calm. Damn it, I should have taken his card. Get Calvin and Buck and go find whatever trashcan that scavenger uses as an office, have a nice, little chat with him."

"Picking up work at a funeral. It's awful," Beth said.

"I want to find out who that son of a bitch was."

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

With the long summer, one of constant revision and struggle to get _The Other Side_ a third season, Emery's work ethic began to fall apart. His nerve for the business no longer connected in the cohesive, energetic way it once did. He knew how it all came together, how the system worked. If he kept calling around, kept putting heat on Dozier, pushed the idea in print and through what fans he could address, the show had a very slim chance of coming back. This was an uphill battle, with a slope that never fared well, but Emery adopted a regimen of incessant telephone calls and letters, roughly five each to the day. That this was aberrant behavior to most of the people he knew in the industry, and a somewhat abnormal thing to do after a cancellation, did not occur to him. To Emery, this form of constant contact displayed eagerness, not arrogance; it was waged with temerity and not obsession, though the two were nearly indistinguishable in him.

The writer had concluded that ceaseless badgering was simply the manner in which business was done in Hollywood. Sol had been correct: He was alone and he had to make his luck happen. No one was going to help him unless that person profited from it. Dozier still wanted in, and though the network producer was tired of late, he was taking part in trying to get the show back on the air. Emery sent letters while on vacation, first class from Cayuga Lake. He made telephone calls from airports during layovers to New York for small side-projects. He mentioned the availability of his scripts to producers behind his guest appearances, even to sponsors while performing for three different commercial spots he took on to keep some money coming. This sort of furtherance, his campaigning, was a routine he had created and upheld near religiously. Despite alienating him from many, his system of struggle was one that would pay off, though that pay-off was not without repercussion.

CUT TO:

INT. 'HUNGER' SOUNDSTAGE - 3:00 P.M.

Several people working on the set, which seems to be the partially-finished interior of a restaurant. We see EMERY walk across the set, busy, his tape-recorder in his hand, though the device seems to be idle, for now. We follow him closely, in a continuous shot, as he moves about the set.

EMERY:

(to a young man in passing)

Chad, did you manage to get a word with Rowe when he came in earlier?

YOUNG MAN:

No, he was in and out. I think he had some sort of appointment to keep.

EMERY:

Oh, of course he did.

CUT TO:

Tired business as usual. Bule Rowe, the new executive producer (and Sol Jamison's replacement for the executive tightrope-walk that was the show's third season), had proven to be a strong asset, but had lately been a little off-hand and unavailable, which made Emery nervous. Rowe had also been delegating many of his duties to the line producer, which seemed a little lazy. Bule Rowe was capable, when he performed, but was difficult to push into action. The man saw himself more as a solver of big problems, rather than half of a show-runner team. Rowe did nothing preemptively, and was not fond of returning calls or being in his office. When Bule Rowe did speak, his subject always fell to figures or infringements on his time.

Emery walked across the set and made his way outside, continuing to his small revision chamber in the busier building across the alley from the soundstage. _Hunger_ was near complete and Charlie Houghton, a veteran director (though a first-timer on _The Other Side_ ), was pleased with the shoot thus far. The actors were in prime condition, as were the crew members, somewhat due to the nature of the episode, which gave them sporadic days of fast work, followed by simpler days of the important, longer scenes that peppered the episode. This was an easier episode to make, and very little had gone wrong or needed changing thus far. _Hunger_ was one of Emery's stories and, in a rare change he hoped to make more common, one in which Larry Belmont had been given the revisions. Emery was exhaustion.

For the four months the show had been off the air, after the second cancellation, Emery had written much and his campaign to get the show back on the air had taken an exorbitant amount of his energy and drive. He had not stopped working. If anything, he had worked harder (though with no assurance) during the cancellation months than he did when the show was up and running. His nerves were weak and his energy sporadic. Confusion found him easily. As in the war, he found he needed to keep track of his thoughts, to maintain a system of focus or he would inevitably begin to drift in his fatigue.

His unemployed summer had run him down and caused a severe rift between himself and the network, a breach he could not repair, even though he was now working again. He was no longer on cordial terms with CBS, and instead thought of the network as unavoidable, an unscrupulous, teenaged dictator. The late initiation of a third season had caused him much physical work. He rushed to both create and redeem a schedule, and keep himself on the move with constancy. A helpful situation occurred when the network chose to relocate _The Other Side_ 's base of operations to Television City, a large complex of studio sets on the other side of Los Angeles. For a short period, settling into the new studios was troublesome, but once the show had been fully moved, Television City proved to work well in saving time, here and there. It was a more efficient setup, though a longer commute for most.

The cancellation caused there to be more work to do, and less time was available to do it. This seemed unending, and weariness was finally managing to get its roots into the writer most had considered indefatigable. Also troubling was that the new executive producer was a blase and difficult-to-catch sort of man who did not seem interested in alleviating Emery's heavy workload at all.

Unlike Sol, Bule Rowe was seldom to be found. He stayed away from the shoots as much as possible, appearing only when there was trouble afoot. In earlier days, Emery would have been pleased with this arrangement. Now that he was tired and worn from the haphazard treatment of the network, and his mind worn from the summer campaigning to get the show another few breaths of life, Emery needed help. His mid-thirties had become his late thirties, and he now found himself making promises to which his body would not agree. He haggled with his energy levels, keeping afloat, but it was a constant effort. His exhaustion was catching up with him and the grueling, nonstop schedule of production was spreading him quite thin; he was writing less, smoking more, and was seldom comfortable at home. He rather wished the other producer were available more, to handle some of the smaller things, as those little troubles stacked up so easily. Emery was still the go-to man on set, but he was running dry of good advice and cheer. When a change in scene was required, or even a simple rewrite for a piece of dialogue, and he still moved quickly to make the change, but he no longer felt good about the work. He felt tedium. A good portion of his statements could be summed with the simple use of a sigh and mild agreement. He found himself more accepting of changes he might once have argued over.

Nearing sixty years of age, Bule Rowe was an odd choice. He was definitely the senior on set whenever he came around. Emery wondered what Dozier was thinking, tossing an old-timer into such a haphazard mix of younger people. Playing Tweedledum to a 38-year old Emery Asher would require some insight, a reservoir of willpower, and a certain zeal for getting things done. It was doubtful Rowe had that much eagerness in him, especially considering that he was not often reachable. More troubling was that Bule Rowe had worked only in romances (though with a brief foray into a Mexican-American War piece that had aired two years prior), before taking this new position on _The Other Side_. Hell, most of Rowe's experience in the field had been in radio, beginning in the 1920's, before Emery had even been born.

At first, Emery concluded that the addition of Mr. Rowe had been settled as a sort of punishment, as if Mr. Rowe had made a few enemies, or been caught beleaguering someone of import, and had been thrown into producing _The Other Side_ as his sentence. Or, perhaps the punishment had been intended for Emery. Rowe did not aspire for the show, giving but tacit explanations here and there of minor changes to budget, sponsorship, and those numerical bits of business that the two executive producers needed to hash out. He was also slippery. Much more than Jamison had been. Jamison had carried some sharp edges and could be terse when he was working hard. Rowe had no edges. He let most things bounce off him with little care. He did not like doing anything, for anyone, and wanted that known right from the start. Rowe was the sort of man that yawned when you spoke, and did little to hide his misgivings, being that he contained no sense of praise or optimism at all.

It wasn't until Emery had been given a chance to talk on a personal level with the new executive producer that things began to make more sense. This occurred nearly two months after they began shooting the 3rd season, when a moment of exasperation caused Emery to dig up where Rowe lived and drive over to the man's house, angry. With irritation, Rowe let Emery in and they had a talk. At the end of this discussion, which was riddled with Emery's complaints and Rowe's mild dismissal of them, the writer did have a better understanding of why someone like Bule Rowe had become Dozier's choice.

Unbeknownst to many, Rowe had produced an unsuccessful pilot for a show entitled _Danse Atomic_ , an anthology show that was to highlight science fiction involving the newfound power of the atom. It was not a novel idea, and had been done many times, but Rowe was apparently quite good with a pitch. He had been given money (by Dozier) to make the pilot. After completion, however, Rowe had faced much neglect by the network, who did not like what they saw enough to air it, or even talk with him. They felt that having more than one or two speculative anthologies was a disturbing and terrible idea, and Rowe's pilot did not hold up to the shows already in place (one of which was _The Other Side_ , then in its first season).

The pilot for _Danse Atomic_ never aired and was a failed project. The concomitant themes, outwardness, and overall essence of the show, however, as well as its status as an anthology, had given the network the idea to put Rowe on another one. A place he might like, and in which he might perform well. They had been fond of what they saw, apparently, just not enough to allow it continue. Being placed with _The Other Side_ was not Rowe's punishment, but a prerogative destination for Rowe's sense of genre, little as he seemed to show it. Dozier was doing Rowe a favor, it seemed.

ZOOM TO:

EXT. 'STAY IN THE LINES' SET, TELEVISION CITY - MORNING

We see a constructed playground, with a mulchy floor, having been erected in a parking lot. Many individuals are setting up for a scene, and several children are talking back and forth beneath one of the play structures.

EMERY and ROWE are standing between two parked cars on the lot as various staff keep clear of them. EMERY is angrily speaking to ROWE, who doesn't seem very involved in the argument.

EMERY:

(pointing a finger)

You have to be on set, do you understand me? This isn't the sort of work you can do over the phone. It's been three goddamn days, Bule, and we need you here. I can't do everything; you need to be here when we're doing this.

ROWE:

Cool your jets. I'm here, aren't I?

EMERY:

Yes, finally. But for long? What does Mr. Rowe's busy schedule have in store for us, today? Will he be gone in an hour? Before we even start on the principals?

ROWE:

Lower your voice. And look around; everything's fine. It's underway.

EMERY:

(clenching his eyes a moment)

Because I'm DOING everything! I can't keep this up, Rowe. I'm one guy; I can't handle every problem that comes down the line. You know what I was doing last night at one in the damn morning? I was sitting in a diner going over the goddamn budget. Again. You need to keep your ass here, or at least in your office, where you were hired to be, and you need to take up some of this slack.

ROWE:

(annoyed)

If you're having that much trouble, you're in the wrong business. Part of this job is delegation. Handle your problems or pack your things.

EMERY:

Oh, I'm sick of hearing people say that. My last EP said that, in fact. "Handle yourself or fuck off. Be a man, Asher." You know what, here's my goddamn epiphany on 'put out or get out': People who tell you to handle yourself and get things done, Rowe, those are usually the people who aren't holding up their fucking end. When they tell you to handle yourself and "solve the problem", it's because they haven't done their own goddamn job and they want you do do it for them.

ROWE:

Oh, it's all a big conspiracy. Everybody's out to get poor Emery Asher. They're riding him ragged with his old car and his bad time-slot and all those shoddy suits and those awful Emmies. Poor guy. He's got it real bad what with all the work.

EMERY:

Fine, condescend all you want. I've managed to bring this show back from the dead twice. I'm on my third run here. Oh, I can handle my problems, Rowe. In spades. I just can't do that while I'm handling yours. You want me to delegate? Here's how I'm solving this problem: Earn your fucking check or I will have you removed from this program.

ROWE:

Calm down. Right now. God, these people. Look, if you're swamped, Asher, take one of your writers and get 'em to co-produce. You should have done that at the start of the season. Hell, offer your guy Belmont a supervising producer gig. He wants to climb, so let him. That's how you get things done.

EMERY:

(shaking head)

Pass the buck, huh? From you to me to whoever I decided to screw?

ROWE:

Buddy, your head is a brick wall. Big, red bricks. Asher, you can do whatever you want, all right? Just stay off my back, you hear? I don't have any room on it for any more of your whining. And I'm not gonna stick around here all day and watch you go up on your little cross. For the love of God, call me when there's a problem that isn't you.

FADE TO:

An agenda spawned from both admiration and the need for relief. Emery began planning and his plan was sound. Rowe was a lost cause, but his notion of promoting Larry had stuck in Emery's mind, and the more thought Emery gave to it, the more he was fond of it. Belmont, after all, was certainly proving himself as a man for whom many jobs _could_ be given, and his interest in the show's workings exceeded that of many others. Emery had begun a secret process of grooming the young man to take over the show. This would not occur for some time, and it was likely the show would be cancelled for good long before, but Emery was monitoring Belmont. He watched the way Larry handled things, and in some instances, Emery had even begun changing the style of the production here and there to align with Belmont's specific skills. An example of this was when Emery chose a particular script from Joe Collery, a newcomer to the show and someone for whom a script or two might be taken from time to time, but a person that was not a production writer, or ever present. The script was a fit for Larry's sense of story.

As an outside writer that Emery had known back in the New York scene, Joe Collery was capable on page, and any dealings with him occurred through postal mail. Emery had chosen a script from Joe that would not necessarily have been his first choice; he chose it because the script was something he knew Belmont would be all over. It was the sort of script the young writer could revise expertly, and had all the elements of Belmont's favored style of writing. Emery did this because he planned to give the younger writer the reigns on the episode. The full reigns. He was not going to offer Larry a supervising producer credit. Emery was going to offer Larry the chance to co-executive produce the episode. This would be a hefty raise in position, even if it were temporary.

When it happened, the episode came off without any trouble, and occurred quite naturally, though Emery did have to meet with Belmont one late night before a shoot and go over quite a few details regarding an assortment of things. Larry had questions, of course, and needed guidance, but they were good questions, and the guidance he needed was more advisory than training. The time needed to go over these details ended up being relatively short however, and the two of them spent much of those three hours drinking and smoking and laughing in Belmont's study. The younger writer may not have suspected yet, or possibly did and knew better than to bring it up openly, but there was a plausible scenario unfolding, one that dictated _The Other Side_ was going to be given to him at some point, making him the head writer and a creative consultant next to Emery.

Emery would always write and act his monologues, but was growing weary of the constant hampering the show caused him, the terrible summers of cancellation (sadly mutated the worse by funerals), the disregard for his life, and the ever-swift whirlpool of network bureaucracy. He had other obligations, other contracts to fulfill, and he could only write so many scripts before he began faking it, here and there. He did not want that to happen. He could feel the current behind the money dragging him around the lake and forcing him to swim so hard in order to keep from being sucked down. The undertow was powerful, and collapse was down there. Failure was down there.

Larry was eager and wanted to move up, though was equally quiet about it. There was a feeling that certain things might happen, was all, and that Larry was on a hidden and uncharted track to having more say in the workings of the show. Another, stronger plausibility was that, for the first time since being drafted and sent off to war some seventeen years back, Emery had finally managed to feel close to a person outside of his family. He finally felt to have made a true friend, the sort one might consider a lifelong friend. Who knew? In the future, the roles might reverse, and Larry would be the one doing the favor for Emery. Calvin Moffat was a bit put out by Emery's favoritism, but his work ethic did not falter, and he accepted the workings of production and his role in it without much qualm.

Bernie Dozier had faced staunch repercussion for his finagling to bring the show back on the air. Emery had not been the only person campaigning for the show over the summer. As much as Emery despised him, the network producer had once again overstepped his bounds to get a new season for the show. Bernie should not have needed to, as Emery was recognized everywhere he went now. Emery and Bernie had embarked on making _The Other Side_ three times now. Every season felt like an extended series of pilots that had to prove the show was viable. Seeing through the lens of cancellations and scattered network whims was beginning to hurt the eyes, and both men began to feel uncertain in their mode. What were they doing right? What were they doing wrong? Answers to these doubts were becoming difficult to pin down, and the expectations of both the public and the network were more unclear than ever.

The fans spanned an enormous range. Old men, children, housewives, actors, his milkman... All of them loved the show and tuned in eagerly to watch it. What possible demographic and audience was the network monitoring in order to gauge the show's success? Where did this group of people reside? It may as well have been Reykjavik, for all Emery knew. He could go nowhere without having to buffer himself from fans and interested families. He had posed for hundreds of pictures with people he did not know. He had stood before the primate exhibit at the zoo, pointing his finger at the monkeys and then aiming his camera beside Beth and the girls, while onlookers nearby pointed at _him_ and readied their own cameras.

Dozier had managed, with the catalyst of Emery's flood of letters and telephone calls to pertinent individuals, to get a third season for the show, but as if a penalty or sanction, he had been somewhat demoted. He would now manage over _The Other Side_ solely. Bernie had begun two other shows in the previous year, and these had been stripped away from him and given to other, eager executives. One of these shows was now presided over by a board of them, rather than one person, something new being tried by the network. As far as Bernie Dozier was involved, the network had allowed him another season of _The Other Side_ to prove the show's popularity, but they were treating the show like the Titanic. They had made it clear that if _The Other Side_ collided with any of their icebergs by the end of the third season, it was going down for good, and Bernie Dozier, as captain, was going down with it this time. He would be finished with CBS. The man had pulled through for Emery and the show, but had angered the wrong people in the process, and those people were now quite tired of him.

Bernie's interactions with the network and the bounds he had overstepped had brought him close to the cliff's edge. That proximity to an end had fostered an avidness and excitability in Bernie that Emery had never seen. Bernie appeared on set frequently, unlike the new executive producer, Rowe, who was absent most days. While technically not an on-set producer, Bernie had begun giving constant aid to anyone who would take it. He did not help the gaffers set up, and certainly did not smoke out back with the teamsters, but he was always available. He had even fetched Emery coffee on one particular, wearying night, much to Emery's surprise. Bernie Dozier wanted to keep moving. Badly. The future his demotion warned, combined with his feeling that he had been a part of Sol Jamison's suicide, had transformed him from a seedy, untrustworthy man of some power, into a genuine, enthusiastic man of little power. Emery preferred the new Dozier, though still disliked him. There was a portion of Emery however, that could not but feel a certain pity for the man. Bernie had garnered the show a third chance, and Emery felt obliged, in the technical sense, to give Dozier a third chance, as well.

Everything was riding on this season, just as it had on the previous season, and the season before that. Everything was _always_ riding. The networks reconsidered their television shows near to the minute, it seemed. Perhaps worst of all was that CBS had fallen under new ownership, and a man named Terry Nichols was running things, having usurped the role of top man at the network. Nichols had begun an immediate restructuring of the prime-time slots, expressing a serious lack of faith for several of the prime-time shows, and giving special mention to _The Other Side_ , which he felt "cost way too much and returned way too little". He had made the commandment that Bernie Dozier cut the season by seven episodes in order to trim the budget, and Bernie had complied. Nichols was the man who had sent the decree regarding using videotape for six full episodes. Videotape was a cheaper alternative to film. This was infuriating to Emery; having the show trimmed in size was agitating, but the use of videotape was insulting and those particular episodes looked horrible. There were other shows being given the same treatment, and it was not working well.

Emery made his complaints known to Bernie, and these complaints did make their way through Television City, but neither of them had any leeway in the situation. They could harass and plead, but not all the way up to the new head of the entire network. No loudspeaker short of public denigration would carry a small voice that high. A shorter season would be made, and it would have to suffice. Ugly videotape was being used. Yes, everything was riding on the season, and the season had been hindered before it even began.

Changes were being made with various elements of the show on Emery's behalf, as well. Not all was bad, and in fact, several nice things had occurred. The relocation was proving quite functional and alleviating, and the decision to have Emery spend more time on-camera during his introductions gave him more room to hint and summarize. There was a new and somewhat offbeat score for the titles and credits, and the titles had been replaced with a new set of images in a shorter introduction. All of these things might sway a few more viewers to tune in, and Emery liked the feel of it all.

Certain things needed to be improved upon, and Emery's quest to be approved an hour-long format was unending. This could not be, as they were on loose ground as it was, but he continued trying to get a single episode, the season finale, to be given an hour of air time. Just once, to prove it would be well received by all. This question of time was one the networks were quite tired of hearing. Emery had been quite vocal in his want of an hour, across two full seasons, and few listened to his logic anymore. With Bernie Dozier now pushing as well, perhaps an hour might happen. Bernie had become a relay and strong mouthpiece for the show, rather than a conductor behind the scenes; more a Gepetto and less a Stromboli.

Emery did not trust his own judgement with writing as much as he once had. He did trust Belmont's, and to a certain degree, Moffat's resolute and artistic vision. Emery held creative control of the show, and he had written quite a few good ones for the third season, but Larry, Calvin, and Joe Collery, were producing great material, and for the first time, Emery wasn't certain he could stay ahead of them. He was by no means an old dog, but he had reached an age in which learning new tricks would require more sweat than he was accustomed to giving, and he did not learn these tricks so fast as his other, hand-picked pups.

Emery had begun to wonder if perhaps he still knew what was best for the show. Both Moffat and Belmont were given scripts to go over, and Emery had begun letting a more democratic approach take over the acceptance and rejection of scripts, rather than follow his own judgement. The instigator of Emery's doubt was that numerous of his scripts had been rejected this season. Holding true to this idea of giving his writers a bit more say, he found four of his own scripts rejected at the outset. This was a new dilemma for him. Granted, even Emery would have admitted that two of those stories were not useable; he had been tired and needed to submit work, but had been given very little time to create the work. The other two rejections stunned him; he felt they were some of his best _Other Side_ stories thus far. In Moffat's words, the stories were "Great. And other-worldly... they would have been perfect for season one".

Emery did not mind the rejections so much, surprising as some of them were, because he knew Moffat had written nearly a dozen scripts for consideration in the third season, and Belmont, always reliable, had put together fourteen scripts. Many of these were excellent. With Emery's twenty-three scripts (though that number perpetually grew), and with the scripts of his writers being in high number early in the season, there was a big enough pool from which to pick. There was pressure, however, in that Emery needed to write and go forth with the majority of the season, as had been done in the past. This pressure came not from without, as the network only contracted him for forty percent of the scripts to air, but rather, the pressure built within: Emery was obsessed with providing. He had a reputation to shadow, not the reputation the world held for him, or the reputation of hard work by which his crew had come to consider him, but his own internal reputation.

Believing he might be failing himself only blacked his heart's eyes. The answer was to make more and to enhance his skill. To do more with whatever he could learn. Not meeting this personal sense of ability felt like death. The rejections only encouraged him to blaze hotter. If only he had more time to write. Being a producer was the lion's share of his day.

The nights were late and the cigarettes poured their linger into him as from vats of smoke pumped through a pressure valve. Smoking and drinking and rubbing his eyes and typing, the stories seemed to be losing their luster, but he was able to regain this with harder revision. He now left more work for himself after the draft, to compete with his earlier output. This piled up, however, and left him feeling as if he were abusing his gift by not living up to it. He had four Emmys. He had to write much in order to prove he had been worth these. He had to write more scripts now than ever, and he had to do this with a skill that demonstrated he was a stronger writer than he had been in the past. Everything had escalated but the hours in a day.

There was a bit of rumor that had made its way through the production. Most rumors were silly or inane, or at best, hinted at events that were in some way wished or even true. They were cloying things and ended quickly, but on occasion, a rumor could cause serious trouble. One such rumor had surfaced, and it was one that Emery dreaded having to address He had heard from two different people now that Moffat had sent a few scripts over to the Hitchcock production, which was no longer with CBS, but now aired on NBC.

While submitting to a competing show on the same network was not wholly against any particular rule, it was discouraged. Submitting work to a competing show on a _different_ network however, was a definite infringement. Emery understood, of course. With _The Other Side_ being cancelled every season, zombified with each unexpected reanimation, Moffat and Belmont had begun looking around for work that might prove balanced and less uncertain. While Emery did understand their dilemma, _The Other Side_ had been given one last chance to prove itself, and to make this work, Emery needed Moffat's best writing, and if the writer was spreading himself, writing in several directions at once, his work for the show might begin to diminish. Emery had given up much to maintain _The Other Side_. Now that it was in a sick bed and plugged into a heart monitor, his writers needed to do the same. That was the job.

Was the show getting Calvin's best scripts? It was better to do one's job first, and, if time permitted, have the occasional project on the side. What Emery needed to do was find out more. If this was simply a case of rejected scripts being sent elsewhere, then there was not much of a problem. Calvin Moffat had an output that could support having side projects. If Moffat was writing scripts specifically for Hitchcock's show, however, looking for a house position, then there was a problem, as Hitchcock was a competing program on an enemy network. For Moffat to approach the competition would be bad form, a bad habit, and even _if_ due to something as innocent as having surplus scripts, this was still a behavior frowned upon and something that should not continue.

Emery had asked Moffat to meet him for a drink after the shoot that day, in order to better ascertain the truth of the rumor. The simplest way, he had discovered, of asking someone's exclusivity, was to ask for it out in the open, one on one, on honest ground. The trouble, of course, was greater than Moffat potentially leaving for another show. The trouble was that Emery suspected much of the crew was doing the same. Moffat was more of a figurehead of this particular dilemma. With only a third season promised, and with the network's stated resolve to cancel half-way through the season if they deemed it best, most of the crew had their eyes open for other gigs.

It was unstoppable, really, but so long as the writers stayed, and the better of the directors, Buck Mifflin, and plausibly Clifford Bunn, the cameraman with his own, rather good sense of things, the show could easily handle changes in crew. The core players needed to hold on, however. It was their exclusivity and loyalty Emery needed to secure. Loyalty was somehow both rare and incessant in the television business. It existed in pockets of extreme loyalty, but just outside of these small niches and nooks, there was absolutely none. .

His talk with Calvin was a priority, and would come soon enough, though there were other problems that needed attention first. A new staff-writer position had opened, with Jon Harris having vacated. Harris had been a new hire, coming on near the end of second season. He had never seemed to fit in well, and didn't get along with anyone. His departure was expected, and with the pressure of the network coming down on the third season, he had been the first egg to crack. Harris had been in charge of commercial writes. This was a lower-than-low position, but necessary. Most sponsors now had their own small studios on commission to create commercials. The networks gave air time for these commercials in exchange for the sponsor 'presenting' the show in question, which meant money. This was the traditional way of things. There were a few smaller companies, however, that still preferred the manner of advertising that radio had developed so long ago: Commercials written by someone associated with the show in question, to better match the material presented with the product pitch. If a commercial was to air during Bennie Mink's Comedy Cavalcade, they asked Mink's writers to create the commercial, and Bennie Mink to star in it. These commercials were highly personalized, and ran a better chance of securing viewers on the product.

Jon Harris had been hired to do this for _The Other Side_ , and had written commercial spots for many products, spots that the companies would then air during the show. This gave the commercials more unity with a program, whether the program liked it or not. In one such commercial, Emery had agreed to stand and endorse Latham's Razors. It was all part of the television persona, and had netted Emery more money than any single episode could. If they had to air commercials during the show, at least the commercials could somewhat match the look of the show. If they wanted Emery to endorse with his image, to act in a commercial, at least he could do so in a way that felt less intrusive to viewers.

There was now an opening on _The Other Side_ to fill this position. With Jon gone, Emery needed a writer to fulfill the obligations already contracted. He needed a commercial man, and Emery sure as hell did not want to begin writing the phony things, himself, or sick any of his story writers on the job. At first, he had thought to have Rowe find someone, but doubted that Rowe would do so with any sort of expedience. Over the past few days however, Emery had struck upon a wondrous idea for filling the position It involved contacting an old friend of sorts, and this was something Emery had decided to do just that day. He knew a commercial man, and not the usual sort, but an old pro.

After he finalized the rewrites for the following day, Emery glanced over the sheet of paper his secretary had prepared, noting that she had located the telephone number he had asked her to find. Emery smiled and imagined the call, how it might play out, in which manner he would approach the job offer. After a moment of pleasantness in his mind, he lifted the receiver and dialed the number. Having a phone installed in his minor writing room with each shoot was a thing the gaffers accomplished with grudge, as something seemed always to go wrong, but a personal phone on set was a new benefit that Emery found he enjoyed much, and it was of strong use to him. He was never so far from Beth during the day, if he could call every so often and reaffirm his existence.

"Hello?" came through the telephone.

"Uh, hello. I'm calling for Mr. Aaron, please," Emery said, jovial.

"Oh, for Maury?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm an old friend. Is this Mrs. Aaron?"

"Well, that's who I am, but you're in for some bad news, I'm afraid."

"Oh?" Emery felt his stomach drop with the weight of the unexpected, as well as the now suspected.

"My husband died of a stroke last year. He can't come to the phone right now."

This last statement, meant to add a touch of humor to the troublesome news, was lost on Emery. His mind turned on itself and, in a mode he did not fully understand at first, began to hate itself. He felt incredibly alone. Everyone was dying, lately.

"I'm so sorry. I didn't know," he confessed, shocked.

"How did you know him?"

"We worked together at WKCR. I was a writer with him there."

"Oh, is this Emery Asher? Mr. Asher?"

"Well, it is, yes."

"Say, what do you know! Young man, Maury used to talk about you all the time. He loved your show, you know. Only missed the first episode. It meant a lot to him that you were doing so well."

"I- I don't know what to say. Thank you. Uh, and him. I- I should have called sooner. I'm so sorry."

"He would have liked to hear from you. Oh, but this is just the way some things happen, I'm afraid."

"I see. You're right about that, I suppose. I think I'm at a loss for words, however... Again, I'm truly sorry to hear about Maury, and for your loss, Mrs. Aaron."

"Were you calling just to catch up?"

"Yes. Well, no. No, in fact I was actually going to offer him a job on the show, if he wanted it."

"Over in New York? Oh, he would have loved that."

"Actually, we shoot _The Other Side_ in Los Angeles. Out in Hollywood."

"He wouldn't have liked that quite as much, but boy _I_ sure would have. He always loved the snow when it came around, but I only ever wanted to live in a sunny place. Oh, I do miss him."

"I'll leave you be. Thank you for the kind words. Your husband was a good man and a great friend."

"Well, one day I'll be sure to tell him you said so."

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

The insects gnashed their jaws and waited in line, entering the building one by one for the ceremony. There was tinny chatter between them. Peppering the audience were the forms of people, true human beings, oblivious to the grotesque infiltrators. All was interbreeding. Industry and insect. Bug and beast and all the bare, American jealousies. Emery was so accustomed to seeing these abominable insects that he no longer felt afraid of them, or cared for their presence in any way beyond the general sigh of foolery. They owned Hollywood in a near felonious way. They had infested the television, the theaters, the radio, and even the books. They were the rule-makers and monitors of the universe, and they had come to Earth to possess her. Soon, they might even lay their terrible eggs in the dogs and cats. Almost every major art and industry had been usurped by the flood of the insects, and where they laid their eggs was in every man, woman, and child that might possibly buy a product. Mr. McCarthy had been terrified of the communists, digging through the arts and business world with his Christian shovel, to announce the scourge and imprison many, but the true, hidden danger had always been the insects. They gave Emmys and mated with one's neighbors in secret.

When the time came to accept the show's third Emmy, and Emery's fifth, he tiredly rose to his feet, affecting a false cheer and a legitimate shock. He made his way to the stage and the podium, past Alfred Tuehler and Claude Bernoulli, actors out of the motion picture industry, and not television. They were the dual hosts of the Emmy award ceremony, and this was a strategic move on the award board's part. The image of Hollywood personnel giving the television award made television seem more applicable, more popular, and just as worthy of viewing. These hosts of the night spoke warmly as Emery passed them and Bernoulli even gave the writer a slight pat on the upper arm.

The podium was solitary and alone before the jittering people and bugs. The sound of applause diminished as he stepped before the microphone. The grind of each carapace against its neighbor in the small seats quieted. The hands slamming together and occasional hoots ended. Emery turned his head from the microphone and cleared his throat.

"Hi everyone," he said after a moment.

_The Cargo_ had been the story of Mike Renton, a worker who packed boxes into freight cars each day. This protagonist's job was to make sure the boxes were stacked properly and tied down for the long trip by rail to the other side of the country. In the story's first scene, Mr. Renton dropped one of the many boxes and it opened. Curious, he discovered that there was nothing inside. He proceeded to open several other boxes, only to discover they were all void of material. He began to ask questions of his foreman, then, but the foreman was quick to push him back to work, offering no explanation. For the remainder of the first act, Renton puzzled over the boxes, opening a few more and peeking in, only to discover each was entirely empty, though strangely, the boxes seemed to hold much weight until opened. A cinder dick noticed the worker's search and barked at Renton to get back to work.

Act II had Renton being called into a room with the company head, a shipping magnate, something quite rare for a man of the labor caliber. The cinder dick, it seemed, had reported Renton to the boss. The magnate asked where Mr. Renton was from, and Renton gave a vague, " _East of here."_ He continued responding in this vague manner for a bit of time, to several questions about himself and his general station, before the magnate told him that the content of the boxes was incredibly valuable, and that the worker would understand soon enough. Renton was confused at this, and repeated that there was nothing in the boxes. The shipping magnate then ushered him back to post, where yet more of the day's boxes were waiting to be stacked. The magnate did not leave, however. He stayed with Mr. Renton.

It was explained that the train did not go to Florida, where the worker had once been told, and in fact, the train did not _exist_ once it left the station. It was a 'nowhere train', and for the past decade, Renton had been loading cargo onto it. A ghost train. Renton was informed that within the stacks of boxes were the memories of the deceased, being taken to the afterlife to meet them there. Every box contained the memories of a person that had recently passed away. Losing a box would cause the memories to never arrive. This would be true death for the soul waiting for them. Mr. Renton became agitated, unwilling to believe this.

In the third act, the train began to leave the station and in a moment of compulsion and rebellion, Renton jumped aboard, to see where the train really went, where the boxes ended up. There was a close-up of the magnate watching this, an expression of intrigue on his face. After leaving the station and continuing for a long while, the train slowed and stopped. It had been a long journey. Renton did not recognize his surroundings. He seemed to have arrived at a station, but with nothing behind it. No mountains, no landscape, no blue sky. There was a station, but no backdrop. No world. All was white and plain.

He looked out over a large crowd of people waiting at the station. Most of them were older men and women, though there were a few youths, and even a small child near the front. They began asking for the boxes, giving him the order numbers on each box's shipping tag. Each person held a receipt of ownership. Confused, Renton began handing the boxes down from the car, one by one, checking the receipts and handing out the boxes. Near the end of this, the magnate stepped into view on the platform.

REVOLVE TO:

RENTON in the train car, looking about, both irritated and a little frightened. The MAGNATE approaches and climbs into the freight car with him.

RENTON:

(frustrated)

So you're here, too? All right, I've had about enough of this. Out with it: What's going on? How can any of this be real? And just who are you, anyway?

MAGNATE:

Fair enough, Mr. Renton. My name is Peter, and I've been in shipping and receiving for some time.

RENTON sits down and rubs his head, annoyed. We pause as he slowly regains his composure, about to ask another question. PETER cuts him off, however.

MAGNATE (FROM HERE ON, PETER):

Sir, you still have another box in there.

RENTON turns around and notices the last box in the cargo hold. He fetches this slowly, mind elsewhere. After a moment, he sees the name on the box. CU shot of the name: MICHAEL RENTON. He looks at his employer.

RENTON:

What is this, some sort of joke? You listen to me, you might be the boss but I want answers, and I want 'em now. I don't understand any of this.

PETER:

I know. And how could you? You've been in our labor force for some time, and our laborers are not privy to the inner workings of the business. You'll understand well enough, however, and quite soon.

RENTON:

What... what does it all mean?

PETER:

Mr. Renton, I'll inform you that you're a civil servant of the afterlife. A worker-bee, of a sort. You provide a service to us for a very specific form of payment, and I'm happy to inform you that today... well, today is your payday, Mr. Renton. You see, you don't remember much about yourself. You have a name, but where did you grow up? East. That is all you can remember, correct? How old are you? Well, you feel to be in your forties, but you don't actually know. Try this one: When is your birthday? Everyone has one, of course, but the date of your birthday hasn't come to mind once in these last ten years.

RENTON:

I... well, you're right. I don't really know any of that. I'm... I'm a little slow sometimes... lost in my head. I've always been that way.

PETER:

No, Mr. Renton. That is not true. You assume you are slow. In all actuality, you are a very bright sort of man. A little too clever, in fact. You simply have no memory. This is about to change, sir. Your own memories, no matter how intimate or personal, are all contained in the very freight you now hold. Everything about you is in that box.

RENTON:

My... my memory?

(Looks up sharply at PETER)

Everything? In this little box... It's in here? All of it?

PETER:

Every bit. Your past. Your tastes. Your personal thoughts. It's all there, Mr. Renton, from your like of key lime pie to your fear of heights. These memories have been kept from you, as punishment for living a sordid life, you see. And you've worked for us without your memory for the duration of your contract, which has just expired.

RENTON:

Expired? What are you telling me?

PETER:

Oh, friend. You're officially fired. But that's no longer important. You see, Mr. Renton, you passed away nearly ten years ago. You're after, now. With us, here. It's best to face it head on.

RENTON:

I'm... you're telling me I'm dead?

PETER:

It's all in the box, Mr. Renton.

We see RENTON pause, thinking this over. He then slowly opens the box. A moment of recognition comes over him.

RENTON:

(muttering, slowly growing excited)

Wait... It- it's me. I think it's me! Oh, I remember this. And that, too. Oh, all of it! There was... How- how could I have forgotten something that feels like this? I could never forget any of this... Oh, dear lord, I'm me! I'M ME!

We see a look of dismay overcome him then. He looks up from the box slowly. He bears the quiet sense of ill news.

RENTON:

And I- I was a bad person, wasn't I? Yes, yes I was. I think I might have been cruel. I did some bad things, didn't I?

PETER:

Yes, Mr. Renton. A troubled life that troubled the lives of others, but not so bad as to warrant outright dismissal. You were still loved, after all, which meant you were salvageable, you see. Still eligible.

RENTON:

For what?

PETER:

Isn't it obvious, Mr. Renton? Why, full retirement.

RENTON:

Full retirement, you say...

PETER:

(smiling)

Yes, for services rendered. You've performed admirably. And for this you gain not only your memory and the knowledge of an excellent job done... but you are hereby granted your official retirement package, with all benefits. Welcome to the end of the line, Mr. Renton. You'll like it here.

CUT TO:

Tedium. Emery had put little thought into the script, had shirked his rewrites onto Belmont, and felt the story in general, while good, had not been delivered in a way that surpassed the mediocre. Belmont had made it filmable, and was likely more deserving of the Emmy than the writer of the episode. The episode had been directed well, yes, but was simply one amid dozens of other episodes, some better and a few worse. Yet there it was, announced from the stage, having been chosen for an Emmy. He felt like a rubber fashion doll that couldn't scrub away the phony smile.

CUT TO:

TITLECARD: Best Writing

FADE TO:

CLOSING SET of 'The Cargo'. We see the idle train car, open, and several boxes inside. Behind this, we see but white. HOST ASHER enters from left, standing before the train.

HOST ASHER (CLOSING MONOLOGUE):

Michael Renton was a man with no sense of self, a drone working out the wearisome days. He worked possibly as penance, or perhaps in sentence, and through this redeemed himself as worthy of much more. You see, it was in helping others, in moving them along, that Mr. Renton could be salvaged. Ten years as a child helping others cross the street. In this way, a man knows himself most by his deeds, and perhaps Mr. Renton, rest in peace, shows us that it is never too late to make up for past transgressions. Michael Renton has learned that his self and his tastes are but the piecemeal of life, that his memory and his past are but one man's freight, to be gathered, boxed, and then shipped... to _The Other Side_.

FADE TO:

The podium. The writer. All the awards in the world of stages. Emery attempted to stand still and speak in the manner an audience expected. This now-celebrated story did not have the power or moral of _All the System_ , or the other Emmy award-winning stories from the past six years, but there he was, standing before the podium, appearing jovial and so pleased. He was not. _The Other Side_ was host to many talented individuals, and it was time they got something for it, but the givers kept looking at Emery. He felt like an ass. It felt like there was a bit of a joke in the air, something errant in the room that tapped at his ears and knocked at his head. The milk of his thoughts had curdled into those clots of disarray that accompanied all self-doubt and humiliation.

Orson Banry's script, _I Sing of Arms and a Man,_ had finally aired, mid-season, but had made for a piss-poor episode, Emery thought. Still, even that script was stronger, more acrobatic, and contained more heart than _The Cargo_ , and was far more worthy of an award. Emery was more of the mood to smash Banry's skull with a brick, however. He had recently discovered that Banry was suing him for a sort of intellectual theft, shouting plagiarism and filing a case for copyright infringement. It seemed the copyright office was having trouble distinguishing between thematics and specifics, lately. Larry, not wanting to be involved in this mess, was keeping ominously silent regarding to writerly dispute.

The trouble was a phrase. The two words "elevator effect" existed in a particular Banry story. They were used by a character to describe the situation of a man's mind not traveling in time with his body at the same speed, which might result in a spectacular disarray and psychosis upon his arrival in another time, a short hiccough of madness following time travel. In Banry's story, this had been explained by a scientist as " _that precise instant in which an elevator ceases moving and its occupants' insides feel to continue downward... that's the mind after travel through the sleeves of time, the psyche having travelled minutely slower than the physical_." It was a minor mention in a story that focused on something else entirely. Emery, having seen the term in a story two decades prior, and having forgotten it long ago, had referenced the term "elevator effect" in one of his own scripts, using it to highlight something utterly different: the process of gaining knowledge at a superhuman speed. If a man were to gain knowledge using osmosis, would he ever reach a point where he gained knowledge faster than he could actually go through it and store it? During that time, he would seem slow, dull, as if taken by Alzheimer's disease, but on the verge of waking up, indefinitely. His mind would be overrun by sorting and processing, rather than contemplation and consciousness. If this could happen, how long would it take his mind to catch up to what it had taken on? Emery had used the term "elevator effect" to describe that length of time. He truly thought he had concocted the term himself. Of all the writers he could have nudged with an accidental crossing of ideas or terminology, Orson Banry was perhaps the worst possible by which Emery could be linked. Recent history had proven as much.

He had not taken from Banry in the traditional, plagiaristic sense, stealing another person's writing and claiming it as his own, but in the inventory sense: He had taken a process and two-word term another writer dreamed up and used it as a diving board into a completely different function, in an utterly different story. It was as if Banry thought he could trademark the idea of time travel, or copyright a descriptive phrase like "the spins". Anyone who wrote about the war and used the phrase "The Big One" was technically doing the same thing Emery had done. "Elevator effect" was not copyrighted and had not been trademarked. As a term, it existed in the world like "elbow grease" or "John Q. Public".

Emery was annoyed, but the public was listening. Several writers _had_ plagiarized Orson Banry in the past, and the author was known for being litigious with these thieves. Emery was quite respectful of those suits and claims, and had always admired Banry's willingness to go after unscrupulous plagiarists. Now that the author considered Emery one of them, however, things had escalated and Emery found himself on the receiving end of something undue. The studio had tried to enter into communication with the angry author, but Banry was unresponsive save for his simple remark of "we'll talk in court."

Banry would no doubt lose the lawsuit, which would be paltry compared to Emery's loss. Emery's respect for Orson Banry was now poisoned, and worse, the lawsuit had hit the newspapers. Banry was good at getting attention, and some were now watching _The Other Side_ with the belief that Emery Asher was a bit of a thief, a fraud. The answer, according to the Dozier, of relieving these potential moments of ill favor with an audience, was to give more air time to scripts written by Moffat and Belmont, as well as a few outside writers here and there. The trick with keeping the show in the light of legitimacy was but the simple requirement that there be less Asher in Asher's show. He had fulfilled his forty percent of the fourth season's upcoming scripts, and had now been cut off. The majority of the season, for the first time since the show's conception, would be other writers. Writers like Belmont and Moffat, Collery and others, but also writers like Banry. That was perhaps the final insult in the legal squabble between Emery Asher and Orson Banry: Rumor that the successful novelist was in talks with the network to gain a regular episode slot on Emery's show, in exchange for dropping the lawsuit (but truly in exchange for shutting his far-reaching mouth).

"I want to thank all of you for this wondrous turnout. It's so good to see people come out to honor television in this way. It's— it's truly a writer's dream to be given an award like this."

A day's lie. The one he could allow. Each day held one such lie, and this would be Saturday's. Tomorrow, he would lie to Beth and tell her things were going well. The following day, he might lie to Moffat and tell him that the fourth season was going to be exciting. After that... well, the act of lying would be endless, really. He would eventually lie to himself and consider himself a success, after all the awards and all the episodes, after the book and the shows, the fan letters, and even the congratulatory honors his television compatriots gave him from time to time in letters and pats on the back. He would be a success, ever on. The lie in this was internal. He was no longer a success in his own mind. Not where it counted. His fight against his growing arrogance was eating him alive. No compliment was good enough and no criticism harsh enough. He had arrived in a vivid, beautiful place, but soon found himself unable to see it through the impenetrable, morning fog. This obstruction would not dissipate. He was losing his grip on everything.

What good was there in struggling to better yourself when all concerned thought you were good enough, when they accepted your half-assing with the same reverence as your hard-won triumphs? Were you good enough if everyone but you thought so, or were you giving in and detaching from your potential? No, as a professional, you were _supposed_ to know more about your work than the public could. You were not to take their word for it. You had your own word to handle, and a sense of integrity with which to grapple.

The workings of the television world and, it seemed, fate itself, conspired to water down and vanquish all he had sought to begin. No one understood. Emery had finally transformed, he had become _The Other Side_ guy, in body first, and now, in mind. He did not feel to be bettering his work, but instead pouring it out like un-aged whiskey from a cask. He felt he had begun trading merit for expediency.

Emery looked down at his hands, settled on the podium, the insect hairs protruding from the meat, felt the beat of his nervous heart within his thorax, the shell of this tautly holding in his organs. He opened his shaky mandibles and his squelching voice tittered out.

"We've been lucky to have such good fans, and you've truly kept the show going."

Jamison and Maury sat in a Red Room afterlife, pouring over their writes, chatting about what a dismal loss Emery had proven to be. The wire cord around Jamison's neck constricted, choking him as he worked and worked for eternity. Maury sat back and smoked, looking upward at the ceiling from the damp basement of WKCR. He blew a smoke ring and then lifted one of Emery's scripts, examining it. The red pen dove in, scratching out every word, replacing them and correcting usage. The ink soaked through and the words were but retch. Maury worked like a tactician as the seconds passed and the pages began to bleed their ink onto the desk.

"It's all of you, is what I mean to say," Emery said. The audience waited.

Suicide was the dismal failure of a soul to survive its own condition. It was a tepid housecat curling up before a wolf's maw, a hawk ripping out its own wings over a pond. This was seen as a way out for a person who no longer felt of use to himself or the world, when he was obsolete or ruined, drumming along without his heart or mind knowing which was for what anymore. The way out was a man hanging from a cord in a garage. This was worse than the natural death, which came as a stroke in the morning, a fall from a height, the snap of a weld in an otherwise strong chassis. These were near sacred manners with which a life could be extinguished. These were the acceptable ways. Suicide, however, was the result of torpor and loss.

Emery found himself having to push away such thoughts with frequency now. He was a good man, but being this would require that he struggle against himself. He wanted out of most things for which he found himself involved, now. His eagerness to prove himself had him taking on every project offered to him. He was burying himself alive. While the best moments only surfaced from the worst, he found himself in a panic over when these would arrive. He had packed more chocolate into his mouth, professing its sweetness, hoping for satiety, to the point he could no longer swallow. He now stood choking, his mind full of regret for things that had not been, at their outset, problematic. Things had spoiled en route. His smile was seldom genuine anymore. The people around him watched as he performed in his suit. The people wanted the smile, wink, and the same story they had grown to consider over time. Again and once more. Emery laid himself prostrate before these people and begged like a beast to be allowed more, to continue succeeding into failure. He might have been losing his mind.

"I mean only that you, the public, should be given this award, and not me," Emery concluded, "You've made the show what it is. All of you. And I can only offer my thanks and gratitude."

He stepped from the stage in a daze, past Claude and Alfred, the actors and unwitting tools of an industry. Band saws and landing gear. Models and tapestry. For every Frank Gill and shark radio-vangelist, there was an Alfred Tuehler and Claude Bernoulli. These figures stood before the most madding of buyers, being the good faces that were worn over the bug instinct. They were the walking awards that served as grand, self-inspired, televised publicity. They were the yes-men of the moment and the princes of pigs.

It was not so long ago that this life began for him. Emery was fifteen years out of the war, removed from those terrible moments of running expiry and dug-in, heinous execution. He was but eleven years out of college. Twelve years married. He was a young man of thirty-eight. He had won five Emmys. Two Radio and Television Writer's Annual Achievement Awards. The Roderick MacGuffin Award. A Farnsworth Achievement Award. The Purple Heart. A Binghamton Alumni Award for Achievement given to him by his high school. The Groundbreaker Award by CBS. Two Scriptwriter's Pen Awards from the Television Writers League. He had two beautiful children. He had two heavy cancellations. There were nearly a hundred bad reviews. There was a lawsuit from a great writer. His parents were dead. Two working friends were dead, one of them a suicide. These were all now interned in his thoughts and memory like mussels attached to crumbly stone. This had all happened in a matter of years that felt forty across, years with the import to give him their face, yet not so many as would seem proper. He could not process it all with the sort of mind he had been given, and his focus was falling dim. It was the elevator effect.

He felt to be a jumper in a plane that was now lost to dive, spiraling down with its nose headed for the dust below, irresolvable and approaching the unavoidable end, yet everyone applauded as if the plane were doing a grand trick to amuse them. It was business-as-usual all around, but his mind did not flow into business so much, and never had. He was quickly becoming a large stone in a river, rushed with water that was picking up speed, and all he cared for had more buoyancy than he. They were passing as he sat. He could feel it. He wanted everyone to like him, perhaps his neediest flaw, but when they did, it seemed for the wrong reason. And then they were gone, passed, and so he tried to address the new, the present. They looked on him and decided things. He both craved and felt trapped by the attention, and he needed to get control of himself. He was making too much of things.

Emery walked on his arachnid legs, mucous drizzling from his mouth as he made his way back to the seat beside Beth and the girls. Belmont gave him a great slap on the back and offered congratulations, in a good cheer and impressed with the moment. Emery's wings druzzed and he turned to face the young writer. A smile separated Emery's hard-shelled lips and his antennae quivered with the narrowing of his iridescent, penetrating eyes.

"Give it a year, Larry. You'll see. You're next."

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

"It's not that they're bad scripts, Mr. Asher. Not by any stretch. I don't want you to get that idea. It's that we have so many stories regarding the war that we're never gonna run dry. That's the only trouble we have with _Den Mother_. It's not the story, it's the genre."

"Well, I understand that, Mr. Singer. And I can rewrite to match what you prefer, somewhat. Allegory's a powerful tool and... I'll rework the script into a different movie, which I think I could do, so just give me a deadline and I'll have it to you."

"We're glad to hear you're willing to do that. Uh, but still we're not really looking for any more war stories."

"I'll make it a different war, first off. I could do that. Same themes, same dilemma, same idea; a group of men in serious trouble and having to make some awful decisions. Civil War, or even the Mexican-American War; that might be good. If we go back that far, though, I'd need to figure out how to transpose the air-drops. I'd need a different sort of setup."

"Mr. Asher, if you can do that, we'd be interested. That's— we're forced to require it, and it's great that you're on board to do so. Right now, we're buried in scripts about the Second World War. Now, on to your other story."

" _The Passing of the Hand._ "

"Sure. I'll just go straight into this one: For one, we're not too keen about the title, but that's small stuff. See, the problem we're having, and it's no comment on your writing, because the script has some real moments, and it does, but the problem we're having is more like there's a lot of... the thing is, we're not sure we can get away with something _that_ opposed to God. I mean, this is a huge majority of Americans that... well, they're not gonna go for it. It's kind of a slap in the face, really."

"Mr. Singer, let me tell you that it's not against God at all. With that in mind, just pass through a second time. Read it again. _The Passing of the Hand_ is nothing more than a science fiction tale with a radical idea about an implausible sort of future. It's no more anti-religious than any book based on scientific fantasy. The book itself did well. I think the movie would easily do just as well, if not better."

"Yeah, but you're talking about evolution, right?"

"The story does presuppose evolution, yes."

"There you go. Last time I checked, evolution is sort of the 'away team' for just about everybody who owns a Bible."

"Here's the thing with that story: I CAN rewrite it a bit, there's room, but not too much because I put it together pretty carefully and I want it to follow the book as closely as we can get away with. What I can do is rewrite to never use the actual term 'evolution', for instance, using words like 'change' and 'transformed' instead of 'evolved'. Or 'metamorphosis'. Changing it like that. Honestly, I don't think the word 'evolution' even appears in the script, at least not that I can remember. But if so, I'll swivel it a different way. What's more, I could easily give the apes their _own_ religion. Making that happen would create kinship between the ape culture and our own. That much I can certainly do. The apes could believe in god. I think I like that idea, too. It wouldn't be too difficult so long as I'm careful. But that's about all I can change with regards the premise of the story, the major part of which is that apes are populating an entire world, and our future, it turns out."

"Eh... well, we do appreciate your eagerness to go forward with this, uh, but let's get back to those ideas another time. I do have some writers that might want to take a swing at it on this end. Just paint it a bit, that's all. We're gonna pass it around a little more, see what can be done."

"Uh no, Mr. Singer. That's out of the question. I do the rewrites."

"Sure, okay. It's your work; I get that. We'll work something out."

People handled one another like Emery handled scripts. A change here and there, a forced opinion, sweet talk with a poison-spur beneath the tongue. A stern foot could be stamped down quickly upon discovering trouble, though that same foot could also become a sudden friend. Allegiance and opposition changed to the day, working things out, killing momentum to change direction with little notice. These people lived by a wondrous sort of code that, were one to decipher it clearly in the moment, could relay the true intent of a conversation with more relevancy.

The producers offered responses that masked intention. It was the dim and lanky stuff of bureaucracy, of mediocrity, the itching, red runs that seeped from the scratching of backs. Coming from Mr. Singer, "We'll work something out" meant "We won't make the mistake of bringing this up with you again." Being told there were others that wanted to be involved was worse, however, and had an entirely different meaning when one knew where the gears turned and by what. Singer's mention of passing the script around to the studio writers, who Emery knew functioned as little more than bootlickers, was insulting, though the problem was likely much worse. For Singer to have even mentioned this indicated that some low-grade, work-for-hire grunt was _already_ working over Emery's script, slapping his own name on it, and getting paid. "We'll see what can be done" meant "Never mind, you're out."

And he was. In the weeks to come, _The Passing of the Hand_ was taken over, contractually, and given to several other writers, that they might raise their pikes and begin goring each scene into the proper elevation and protocol for a regular flick. The time-weathered occupations of reduction and contractual trespass were in their blood. Emery knew the nature of a rewrite artist well, and knew those particular designs better than most, as Emery had once been that person, in radio, and now used the rewriter's pen in his own work, with his own, peculiar organization. Every writer needed skill with both drafting and revision, but there were those who possessed neither. There was an especial breed of writer often hired by large companies for the simple task of cutting things to bits and ham-fistedly inserting the ideals of a particular phase of cinema into the story at hand.

There were writers who could not revise a story, but instead murder it, and these were writers that did not create. How could one accept the re-construction of a story if it was performed by a man who could not write? This was as if trusting the opinion of a food critic who had been born without a tongue. Characters, scenes, themes, plot, conceits... all of them on the chopping table. It was as if a Hemingway or Steinbeck being picked over and altered by the writers of newsletters. Emery's script was to be taken from him, looked over and judged by people who scanned for a product, not an art, and whose code of writing fell under the scrutiny of those memorized, bulleted rules that so many ascertained to be the safe gospel of the motion picture.

Art, with her eye on the public, was not capitalism's quiet lover so much as his prostitute, and there were those who considered her quite raggedy. Television was following Hollywood's lead. Everything seemed to be joining into this odd workfare of maintenance and construction. Never in a writer's life had it been so important to know a specific demographic and tickle it accordingly. This drained blood from the author and then dimmed the lights over the pallid thing left over.

Emery uttered his sighs and lit his cigarettes. Smoking hard, these cigarettes were but filters in less than a minute. The stress had rickety bones and these rattled within him, jittering over petty trials and daily assertions. He was tired of representing himself, of defending his show, and his writing. The better span of this time should have been spent at home with his family. _The Other Side_ , and its head writer, needed constant protection, as if each gray soul he encountered could not understand the obviousness of his decisions. He found himself receiving fan mail that asked for explanations regarding episodes: _What did Joe mean when he said, "She's always been here, in some way or another," at the end of_ The Girl from Hatterburg _? Why didn't the alien agents in_ Bravo, Mr. Whitley _, just send Whitley back and take a different person? How come we don't ever see the poet's face in_ I Contain Multitudes _?_

FADE TO:

Submerging. Emery was dissilient in projects, but weak with questions and defenses, favors and requests. He was exhausted with trying to get the show an hour-long format, something it was supposed to have had from the beginning. He was mentally depleted from working behind all the scenes in industry just to keep his name clear of that nasty plagiarism rumor and (finally dropped) copyright infringement lawsuit. The fatigue grew as if a mold over his brain and across his musculature, to the point that sitting still for even a moment seemed a sort of odd sin. He kept moving, smoking, pouring the coffee down his throat and typing away the evenings near his family, scattering his mind over the facets of his television show, trying to square up who he might sick on what job, just so he would not have to do it himself. He was played out from hopping on that ever-present edge of being outplayed. He paddled his hands well and reached the surface, tread and went under; this occurred to the day, and at times, to the very minute. Fill the ashtray. Fill the coffee cup.

The three pictures for Pacific had been summarily picked at, and the studio wanted heavy reworking on two of them, something he was trying to fulfill with a short deadline. The complete renovation for _The Passing of the Hand_ , the third script, was an overhaul he was not invited to take part in, however. The fourth season of _The Other Side_ was underway, with three episodes filmed and the next slated to begin. Emery had taken a step backward from the show, as he no longer found he could give it his constant care. The maintenance he performed was disregarded anyway, and he had begun to feel as if he were an obstacle to the crew, at times, rather than a provider of guidance. He felt to be more an employer now, and less a creative influence. Perhaps this was due to familiarity, as the crewmembers were as if siblings to him now. The family was functional, but they had ceased inviting Emery out for drinks, and they did not often call but for problems requiring his attention. This may have been intuitive on their part; he only rarely allowed himself to accept recreation anymore. In the solving of various problems, Emery often inadvertently created new ones for himself. Sometimes a trouble could not be solved outright, and a person simply had to take the hit.

He now wrote his scripts and appeared for the monologues, did various things on set when needed, exercising his creative control less than he once did. Emery had grown into the habit of passing jobs to others as quickly as he could. The fourth season was overwhelming. He was thankful that the show had managed to pass the network's constraints and not be cancelled, but the work was piling up. When a scene regarding the newspaper office in the second episode needed rewriting, he had set Moffat to it: "It has to be done this week, and I can't possibly get to it. Do what you can. Thanks, Cal." This was becoming routine.

Emery kept to his guns as much as he could. When a script's ending was judged too dark for the network to approve, he would give it to Belmont: "Change it to your liking, Larry, and make it even darker. Have fun with it, but make sure it doesn't seem dark or dismal until the audience has really thought about it. Hide it in there. We'll get the story across that way. Screw 'em."

He could no longer tackle each trouble to arise and Rowe was nonexistent. Emery simply could not do it all. He had written eighty-four episodes over a three year period and felt arid. His best works were voted out by the group, and his mediocre works were taken with pats on the back. He was confused and studying the accepted scripts hard, trying to find a general nucleus between them that he could take apart and adopt as a mainstay.

ZOOM TO:

Belmont. Belmont was writing some of the best scripts the show had yet seen, but unlike Emery, his were being accepted. Larry was not as good at hiding moral in his stories, but his tales had their own sort of conceits, and good ones. They could often be mistaken for real shockers, when in reality the stories conveyed more. That was the beauty of Belmont's style, and Emery could spot it with ease. People thought Larry was writing surreal tales that possessed an other-worldly bent, but they had it backward. Larry Belmont wrote other-worldly stories with a surrealist bent, and his other worlds were quite closely related to our own world. His structure was not as strong as Emery's, and his dialogue was not as real as Moffat's, but his overall force was undeniable, and he possessed one of the most important writer traits to a greater degree than Emery or Calvin: Improvisation. Larry could work from the top of his head, without outline, structure, reason, or any plan at all. He could sit down, utterly blank, and simply make things up without forethought, word after word, line after line, and he could do it at will. Writing was easier for Larry than it was for the other two writers. It was not, nor had it ever been, hard work for him.

There was a bit of competition that had arisen in the fourth season, between Emery and Belmont. Moffat was smart to stay out of it. The two writers, friends, had been comparing rejections, accepted scripts, and rewrites. They were battling in a somewhat genial way, to see who the true _Other Side_ workhorse was. This had begun in simple fun, stemming from a conversation over drinks in the Asher house one night early in the season, but over time that fun had begun to glare a bit. Belmont did not have the drive Emery had, but this was perhaps a benefit, and not a failing. Also, in the unofficial contest, Belmont did not have the monologues on his side. Those belonged to the host, and only the host wrote them. In this way, the younger writer could never fully win, though the work he brought to Emery was threateningly good. The glare in this fun competition was aimed at Larry. He served as both willing playmate and mild butt of the joke, and this friendly (though rigged) competition was one of the only aspects of the season that made Emery smile.

On the heels of Banry's lawsuit, which had been killed by its instigator in favor of a few promises from the network, was another suit filed by the same, damned man. The first lawsuit had been dropped, a contract had been signed, and Banry had simply filed another lawsuit, perhaps feeling himself clever. Emery's cigarette intake was flourishing and no amount of respect for craft diluted his resolve that Banry was a despicable, curmudgeonly person. The new lawsuit was as frivolous and ludicrous as the first. Banry had penned a story involving a mexican-hating thespian. That protagonist, while in costume and makeup after a performance of a play near the Texas border, had finished a play in which he had portrayed a Mexican immigrant. Soon after, the thespian found himself mistaken for an immigrant (due to his costuming) by an evangelical hate-monger. The racist preacher chased the thespian into the woods near the playhouse, shouting at him that he was not wanted or welcome in 'these parts'. The man got away, managed to take his make-up off, and could be assumed to have learned his valuable lesson: What it felt like to be a receiver of racism. The story was somewhat weak in narrative, but the spirit was there. Emery had written a teleplay that was similar, yes, but without any knowledge of the newer Banry tale. Emery's experience with Banry's story only came after the new lawsuit was proclaimed.

Emery's script, in question with Banry's lawsuit, involved a white, southern bigot that hated just about everyone, and treated most people with cruelty. In the story, the bigot woke one morning to discover, much in suprise, that he was laying alone in the woods, and had transformed in his sleep. He was suddenly a black man in the early, antebellum south. The man panicked at this and headed for a nearby town in the distance, only to be caught by a hunting party and mistaken for a runaway slave. They brought him to town, where he was locked in a room and questioned. The questioners became very angry when they noticed he could read, and they beat him badly. With no information on any previous owner, the men placed the protagonist in a cell. He was soon thereafter sold at auction to a plantation owner every bit as cruel and bigoted as he had once been. There was a lesson, a speculation, but there was no redemption for the man. The ending for him was somewhat dismal. There was no waking-up-to-discover-it-had-all-been-a-dream, no happy conclusion, just a harsh comeuppance and a long, long fade: The protagonist would live out the rest of his days as a slave.

Yes, there were traits in both tales that wore similar ideas, but nothing directly stolen or even all that cohesively similar. Banry's story involved a playwright, Mexicans, and farmers, to show the just-desserts of racism. Emery's story involved time-travel, the slave trade, and the old south to demonstrate a similar moral. That was all that really shone similar in the two tales: The moral of the story, with a few dissimilar seconds in the woods. One could not copyright a moral, and woods were a location quite common in supernatural tales. The moral was no more unique than those all-too-common stories of rich, arrogant people forced to live like the humble poor for a time, or even the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge: A penny-pinching totalitarian forced to realize the error of his ways by a visit from the other-worldly, direct from the other side, in fact. No one thought Emery was stealing from Dickens, and no one should have thought he was stealing from Banry, but the vociferous novelist had a loudspeaker in the story-writing world, in part through his Orange Grove group, and his mouth was quite active. When he, a celebrity, hollered about someone with Emery's sort of celebrity, it was news and people listened. A bickering tussle between heavyweights was grand entertainment. Just in that, in the public listening, the message gathered weight. The network had, of course, shredded the contract they had signed with novelist and had no intent on honoring anything that had been offered in it. Banry filed a lawsuit for that, too.

Perhaps the most damaging of the concussions Emery's reputation received through the two lawsuits was that the more the press talked about Emery's "alleged plagiarism", the more the word "alleged" seemed to be given less focus. The notion that this crime was only a thing being claimed by one man was slowly being dismissed in the opinions of people and their commentary, their incessant letters to the editor, and even in their letters and passing questions to Emery, himself. Plagiarism was what stuck in the mind, not the allegation. The idea of the crime outgunned its supposition.

Orson Banry would fail in his new lawsuits: No one could copyright a moral, and the network had been lawful in terminating the contract over Banry's infringement of its clauses. Perhaps the most galling aspect of this plague on Emery's character was that the press now came at him like a swarm of hornets. The public mind was prone to a certain blade of logic: Why would Orson Banry sue a second time if Emery Asher were truly innocent? The immediate rise of this new lawsuit against Emery had resulted in momentum for Banry's general cry of 'plagiarist!', as if Emery had, indeed, stolen from Banry, this time as a sort of revenge. Worse, Banry had just won a copyright lawsuit against another novelest who had, in fact, stolen from him. The public saw Orson Banry as their own speculative voice. He was their author in the genres, a talented creator who was plagiarized often. Banry somehow existed within the strange reputation of being the nice man who was picked on. To the small-time writers and general public, these lawsuits seemed as if Banry was striking back against his bullies. The public enjoyed hearing about him going after the writerly thieves. In reality, Orson Banry had become a court cowboy who had fallen prone to a misguided sense of conspiracy. The novelist had luck and image on his side, but he was a very bad aim.

The fourth season was en route, with much help from Belmont being a newly empowered part of the decision process. The first lawsuit with Banry had been shut down, and the scripts for Pacific had been written. That these upshots were supposed ends to specific troubles was obvious, but sadly, these positive outcomes had not become endings. Each was but a beginning to batches of hungrier, unswerving problems. Each bit of trouble solved only returned later with reinforcements, having spawned troublesome friends to which Emery would have to dedicate yet more time.

The fourth season was not very good, and Emery knew it. Rather than appreciate the leverage he had been given on the show, he was beginning to resent his younger self for having agreed to so much work. Orson Banry's frivolous suit had simply resurfaced as another frivolous suit, but despite the paltry meaning of it all, the novelist and his Orange Grove group were indeed doing much damage to Emery's reputation. The Pacific Pictures scripts, submitted for approval, had only been un-submitted, due to the studio's dislike of them. The stories would now necessitate much more work from him in the future, and one of them was being entirely chewed over by other writers he did not know. The original problem Orson Banry had posed, of being unable to deliver an acceptable script, was now the same problem Pacific Pictures seemed to feel they had with Emery.

These problems were all quite large and unwieldy, and each had approached him on the legs of a hyena, stalking him as in a pack through a place that was only becoming more desolate as the months passed. This was a world of dilemmas for him, an illogical, spinning world where finding a solution to a problem was not the end of the problem, a solve, but only the starting off point for a new breed of troubles, each coming for him to have its way with his time, his image, and even his very name. Every asshole in the television world had an agency and an army now. No amount of accountability or performance was enough.

He could not show this, however. He had to remain sturdy.

CUT TO:

The mask one wore when others were looking, when they were asking and reading; the better, devised face. Refined and prepared, donned and kept snug to give everyone the lovely, painted-on smile they expected. Was there anything more professional or American?

FADE TO:

Print.

### 'Other Side' has Other Side, Says Asher

By TOM CHURLEY, L.A. Supporter, Sept. 12th, 1961

Emery Asher said Monday morning that he has regrets about his work on fan-favored, The Other Side, now in its 4th season.

The 38-year-old host of the show has a history of pointing the finger—from behind his dramatist pulpit—at networks and sponsors, as well as other writers, including popular science-fiction novelist Orson Banry.

Asher spoke on Monday about the "superhuman" schedule the show demands—especially now that the show has garnered not only three Emmys, but two cancellations.

"It keeps us all busy," he said, "I'm less demanding now, but some would still say petulant. I have to keep our ship moving."

One of the reasons for being so busy, he said, is his ongoing battle with sponsors, who he claims are "squeamish by nature" and yet "over-involved" with the stories.

"I'm a workhorse, sure. Gratefully," he responded when asked about his many jobs on the show.

When questioned about the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against him by novelist Orson Banry, the second such lawsuit filed against him, Asher declined comment, explaining that he did not wish to speak ill of Banry, and would not be filing a counter-suit.

"I don't want to attack him and I don't think I need to defend myself from him. I just want him to focus on his own work, and not mine."

Sounding-off less than in the past, the seemingly new Asher had little to say regarding previous cancellations or the possibility of more trouble to come: "I'm not badmouthing my professional neighborhood."

Mr. Asher explained that he has completed many of episodes in the current season, which we'll see through spring.

"Almost everything is shot," he said, and "fans will be pleased." Asher not only writes, but produces the show hand-in-hand with CBS, and also acts as the on-screen narrator/host.

"I do a lot of everything," he said, "I have a lot of say. Even too much. There have been moments when I wanted the show to be finished, to let me move on to other projects, especially after the cancellations. Those are simply the other side of the show. The public sees a honed product, but the process of making that product can be manic. There are many people involved. A lot of politics."

Mr. Asher has also recently finished several movies for Pacific Pictures, newly owned by Claude Wilmot, with one of the scripts scheduled to begin filming in the summer.

In addition, he said, "I've been talking with Billo and Samuel about a full-fledged novel, some ideas I have. And keeping busy with a stageplay version of Coronach."

The writer was interviewed at the home of actor James Paul, who reportedly plays two characters in this season's final episode of The Other Side.

**Chapter Twenty-Seven**

She was wonderful on stage. Ten years old and full of strange, quiet bravado. The meek voice peeked from her thoughts like a mole-rat taking quick, distressed glances, but her physical presence was lit well, and her gestures were both entertaining and keen. Rebecca had not garnered the role she so wanted, that being the role of Alice, but had all the makings of an excellent Dormouse, despite that the character was male and generally played by boys. With enough makeup and a surprisingly creative costume, however, she was every bit the Dormouse she was asked to portray. The production was _Through the Looking Glass_ , and it exhibited the ability of these fifth graders to both ham and enjoy themselves, to distract a night well. Emery decided he would find the costume designer after the show and complement the on-stage handiwork. One costume, the Queen of Hearts, even held up to the standards he knew through television.

"You don't have the right to grow like that! Not here!" Rebecca said as Dormouse, to Alice.

"That's nonsense; I can see you're growing every bit as much as me," the taller, blonder Alice responded.

There was nothing quite like elementary school theater.

He had some guilt over having Vivian stay with a babysitter during the play. He thought that keeping an eye on the younger daughter while the older sister performed would be distracting and difficult. Now that he was viewing the play, the great colors and fun pace of it, he knew Vivian would have been enrapt. While he quietly nudged himself with his mistake throughout the play, there was a part of him that was pleased to be there in full, with Beth, affirming their daughter solely. Rebecca would admire this, and it would make her feel good to get all the attention, for once. She rarely gained sole attention from her parents. While Vivian had never been a spot of contention for Rebecca, like Emery had been for his brother William when young, there was a certain streak of jealousy that propped its teeth in the older daughter from time to time. The attitude was subtle, but one could glimpse this minuscule hydra if one knew the look of it.

"Only treacle, really," Dormouse said, pretending to be nearly asleep in court.

"Contempt!" the Queen shouted, "Take that horrible little Dormouse out of our court! Put a collar on him and then cut off his head."

There was a pause before the Queen startled and rephrased: "No, no, cut off his whiskers!" Emery smiled. Ah, the flubbed line, so common in productions. He knew the sound of it, even with no knowledge of the lines. Though the Queen was being played in a sillier fashion than Emery had remembered this character from his own youth, the young girl playing the part recovered her line quickly. Whiskers. All of the commands for head-removal would come later in the play.

Children as thespians. It was marvelous. Emery was no stranger to actors, and had now worked with some of the brighter lights in Hollywood. He found it of great humor that these children and the higher echelon of talent in television were rather similar in approach, and tended to foul up about as many lines. The difference, of course, beyond occupation and age, was that Emery still enjoyed the company of children.

Two sentries led Dormouse from the stage while she feigned boredom and weariness. This was a somewhat complex scene for children, but was performed greatly by children who were, in their own manner, quite complex. Rebecca most certainly fit in with her schoolmates, something Emery had fretted about at rare points over the previous few years. Vivian was not doing so well, and tended to isolate herself in her kindergarten class, though her grade was initiative and really only provided an outset, a launching point. She would surely find her place. Some time was needed. One facet of kindergarten was learning that there were other children in the world beyond one's siblings and few neighbors. Some kids simply needed a little longer to adjust to this. Emery had been quite shy the first couple of years of elementary school, but not Beth. Her mother had quite a few humorous stories about Beth's youthful bossiness over other children.

The fourth season of _The Other Side_ had somewhat escaped him, but this mode of the doldrums was not going to repeat itself. The show had not been cancelled. Even Emery was surprised. Now that the season was over, the fifth season could be crafted, and he found himself renewed in his career by the news he had received over the weekend. Not only was the show being granted at least another season, but it was being given much, much more. There were three separate telephone calls from Dozier, and one from Rowe. The first of these calls had been announcements of something that _might_ occur, and the last call, from Rowe, was the one that cemented the news as no longer merely plausible, but granted. After all the work and finagling, all the meetings and written pleads, concerning all the people that rallied with him and all the people that had changed their minds endlessly throughout the first four seasons, his initial request was finally being granted: _The Other Side_ was being given an hour-long format. This was the format Emery felt he deserved and the time-allotment that would allow him to flesh out his characters and stories superbly.

The talks with Dozier had been frivolous, in afterthought, but now that enough time had passed, Emery could see all of these meetings and pleads for what they were: Momentum. All that had been needed for Emery to get his way was a season that proved successful by the network's newest standards. The fourth season had accomplished this, though Emery felt it was the worst of the seasons thus far. As a whole, it fell short and was only held together by his new Emmy, and a few episodes that were, in truth, some of the best Belmont and Moffat had ever written. They had supported the season enough, propping up the show around the somewhat staple stories Emery had written, and the one very good one. The season had drawn the fan-base the network seemed to find appropriate.

For once, Emery had not simply worked and designed for his own successful show, and one that the fans adored, but had worked and designed for a show that his employers found successful. In this manner, things could be asked. There were a few big stars lined up for the fifth season, and those they had signed on were somewhat iconic. Things were looking up and the Sun was out. Emery vowed not to let his depression and exhaustion get the better of him this season. He would tap that energy he had when starting the show. To him, this would become the first, real season of his program, the great show he had envisioned at the start.

There was a stockpile of older, hour-paced scripts, dramas from the first leg of his career, in a box beneath his bed. He would remodel these. They were a top secret weapon now in his hands, in the form of his mainstay. The hour-long format had been his bread and butter for some time, and being forced into a half-hour slot for four years had been difficult. He had learned much in returning to a smaller time-slot, but now that he was returned to his better medium, things would really begin to happen. The fifth season would not only be more to him in artistic clause, but easier, as he already had scripts lined up for revision. He did worry about the strain this would put on his writers. They were unaccustomed to having that much time in a script.

Emery would spend the next few weeks grafting the stories to his newest conceits, and then spend the season giving monologues for each episode, episodes he felt, for the first time in two years, would be worthy of the attention he had already received. This, too him, felt as if repaying a massive loan and being finally clear of an unscrupulous bank's harassment. These scripts, some of his most neglected, forgotten work, would become his best new work, once revised and re-written, and he felt they even rivaled his early, award-winning scripts in both potency and drama. He felt as if he had spent a great portion of his life building his body, and now he would finally get to take his shirt off in front of others. The first episode was ready to shoot, and Emery knew it was a strong one.

Belmont was having a difficult time adjusting to the longer scripts, but his first attempts were working somewhat. He had a script cleared for appearance near the middle of the season, and Emery was confident that Larry would hit a stride soon enough. Moffat was an entirely different problem: He was on the verge of quitting. Emery had found that speaking to Calvin about the nature of the show's new direction, in the manner of its new format, helped somewhat, but while both of Emery's writers were accustomed to a shorter allotment of time to express their stories, only Moffat felt going into an hour-long format was a mistake. He felt it would ruin the pacing, that people would become bored before the tilts and shocks could surface. He felt that adding more drama would detract from the speculative attraction of the stories.

Emery's answer was natural and cohesive, and gleaned from years of success in the matter: An hour meant not only more drama, but more speculation, which was somewhat Moffat's specialty. This was a chance for the writers to stretch their wings and take some chances, because there was room in each script to iron those rough edges out, if needed. _The Other Side_ was no longer offering the small treat, but was going to exhibit a true, main-course. Calvin was in, for the time being, and had begun working out longer scripts, but Emery knew there were only so many pep-talks Calvin could be given before something else would be required. To Emery, that something else would be the unfortunate but necessary termination of Calvin's contract. This was a disheartening plan, but Emery had little choice. Calvin would be replaced if he could not provide.

The itch crept into his fingers and the urge to smoke became overwhelming. Technically, Rebecca wouldn't have a scene in the play for at least the next ten minutes, and so Emery excused himself to go out front and have a cigarette. Two. Beth frowned at this, but nodded. As he made his way down the seats and into the aisle, Clyde Larkin, a neighbor that lived about a block away from the Ashers and who now sat at the row's edge, gave Emery a nudge on the leg.

"She's great!" he whispered. Emery thanked him quietly and continued outside. The Larkins had no children of their own, but were friendly and quite involved in the neighborhood. They knew several of the children in the play, and their nephew, Charlie, was performing as the Carpenter.

Once the cigarette was lit and his first inhale had been taken, his mind calmed. Things were so simple when a man could get away from them for a moment. Stepping outside to smoke was a friend that helped him clear his mind, but the content of the cigarette itself, nicotine, was the true relationship. The incessant stresses of his life dissolved for a moment or two while dragging from his cigarette. It was during these brief reprieves from anger and frustration, these chemically-induced spots of calm amidst complexity, that he fathomed his best ideas, that he made the most ground when trying to ascertain his life and those in it. Everyone had a process. Calvin claimed his own best ideas came to him on the toilet, and Larry couldn't come up with anything unless, as he said, there were at least three cups of coffee in him. Emery inhaled, soothed himself, feeling the crispness in the air. This was good time of year.

While smoking outside of the elementary school gymnasium, Emery went over some romantic notions regarding Beth, realizing how much he was still very much in love with her. It was while standing there, smoking, that he thought up an idea of later pitching Rebecca on an extracurricular theater group, if she were so inclined. While smoking and listening to the play, still audible, he also made a few changes to the plot of a half-finished story he would attend once home. He inhaled the smoke, the nicotine entered his bloodstream, and his brain curled like a dog before a fireplace at the end of a tiring day. So many things he could do with an hour long episode. So many new arcs and plots.

When the cigarette was extinguished, he glanced inside and saw that Rebecca was not yet onstage. The Dormouse would be out until the very end, if memory served him. He leaned against the outer wall of the gymnasium's façade, listening to the lines being delivered within by the group of children in their wondrous costumes, and he lit another cigarette. Roy Cully walked out of the building and stood on the other side of the entrance, lighting a cigarette of his own. Emery had never liked the Cullys much, as they were the sort of neighbors that did not understand the idea of a neighborhood. They saw everything as offense and intrusion. They were also quite crass and Mr. Cully had too eager an eye near the neighborhood's wives. Roy acted friendly enough, but his mannerisms often came off as if he were giving an extended pitch. The few times Emery had spoken with Roy Cully, there had been a feeling in the air that Mr. Cully was trying to sell him something. The Cullys played inferno to the Larkins' paradiso. Emery had a long-established, yet somewhat hidden despisal for those damnable wind-chimes the Cullys had hung on their porch several years back. The chimes were quite long and out-of-tune, and once something made them move, they kept moving for hours, ringing off-key and unrhythmic notes that stretched without end. This trouble had been remedied quite recently, in the manner of a sneak-attack. Someone had gone after the wind-chimes with Beth's sewing shears at three in the morning. This suburban rogue, whoever he was, had gone undetected, but his mission had been fruitful: The nights beyond the typewriter were sanely quiet again.

There was a moment of awkward silence before they acknowledged one another.

"Emery."

"Roy."

"Smoke time, huh?"

"Sure; my daughter is off-stage for a bit. Thought I'd sneak away."

There was quiet then. Roy Cully had no response, which was fine. Neither had much wanted to talk to the other. Roy paced as he smoked while Emery settled into his position against the wall, leaning and relaxing, becoming isolated in thought.

Theater had eluded him. In previous years, he had placed much emphasis on converting _All the System_ and especially _Coronach_ for the live stage, but unlike his other projects, he simply had no grip on it. The various devices and ploys he tried to use either did not function well, or made the story too cinematic for a live performance. A small hole had formed in his mind, an empty spot that the project continually hid within. Things slipped into this and rarely came back. He could spend a week writing several scripts for the screen, but his conversion of those first successes into stageplays had been in the works for nearly six years. A sort of medium-specific writer's block was in play. This was frustrating and felt alien.

Over the course of the summer and fall, with the fifth season underway, he would use his spare time to wrestle the live theater projects into fruition. His respect for theater was sharp, and while the format had substantially fallen out of his grasp these past years, he would change this. He would go see more plays, read some of the fresh, new talent. He would study the craft and work himself into it. The live stage was a fraternal twin to the screen. Even the writing formats were incredibly similar; he simply needed to give it some study and then focus on completing the project. Much would happen, he hoped.

"I uh, noticed you took down those wind-chimes of yours," Emery said with an internal smile.

"Well, somebody did," Roy replied with a frown.

"Not you?" Emery asked, exhaling a flow of sating smoke into the affectionate, night air. He felt as if he were in a scene, cameras in the distance. The chill of the air seemed, by its peregrine scents and breezes, to both commission and endorse the grand feel of late summer. For a moment, Emery leaned against the cool wall, watching just about everything in view alight with life.

**Chapter Twenty-Eight**

Lieutenant Merrill sat before him, hardy and decked in Macy's fare. His medals and epaulets were pinned to his cheap, business suit, and he had attempted to slick back his withered, white hair. Situated at the mahogany desk in his office at CBS, Merrill twiddled his fingers somewhat, rubbed his chin much, and wore the strange complacency of a man who prided himself on expressing bad news so well that he might no longer feel even the briefest twinge of remorse or compassion. Crushing a fellow was business as usual. Merrill may as well have been a world league wrestler, waiting in the ring. There was an opponent, after all.

Emery's presence was tacit. The reason he had been called to the office was one of clipping an errant hair after an established cut. The orders were in, had been decided without him, and were quite settled. Emery suspected the news the very moment he had received the memo summoning him. He sat in the office before Bernie Dozier's boss. It was telling that Bernie had not been asked to take part.

"Is this what I think it is?" he questioned, tired.

"Son, that depends on what you think it is," Merrill said, his pistol laying in plain view on the desk.

"Terry Nichols, right? The big man is swinging his dick around, and so we're cancelled. Again."

"That's not the tone I'd use, private, but affirmative; it's a cancel," Merrill said.

"Then Bernie should be here, too."

"No, Bernard Dozier is oblivious and I've stripped him of rank. I know him too well and I don't feel like putting up with his squealing. This is your squad on the skids, so you're the man I'm talking to. Tried to call Rowe, but couldn't get ahold of him. I meant for you both to be here."

"No one can ever get ahold of Rowe. He does nothing and he's a liability. You should discharge him, dishonorably."

"I have, he just hasn't heard about it yet because he doesn't answer his damn phone."

"You know, this last year, I actually started to admire you a little," Emery admitted, "because you kept giving Bernie the benefit of the doubt, and I thought the network had come around. I thought you actually believed in the show."

"That was silly of you, but thanks."

"Do we at least get to air the full season? It's shot and edited. We worked hard."

"Yes, I know. And I've had a lot of faith in it, private. The others, however... Well, it's something like this: Command wants to be done with _The Other Side_. They just don't want it anymore. Especially General Nichols. You're not a productive squad, and they've decided to ground you."

"When, sir?"

"About three hours ago."

"You mean nothing airs after tonight's episode?"

"We've lost this skirmish beyond expected casualty. They've already replaced tonight's episode with some sort of Christmas caper. Tis the season, and all. The commercials are running with it even now, soldier. We've been cut off from supplies and our horses have starved. The war is over. We have neither won nor lost; we are but survivors without map or home. The important thing now is to figure out how to tell our men."

"They'll be remiss," Emery muttered.

"Make certain you salute every last man, Asher. The women, too. The grunts and captains, every member of your squad. All. And with nobility. Don't be stingy with the chevrons and medals. And do it with respect; even the teamsters who just came on for the first time today. You salute and salute again until your arm feels to fall off."

"I see."

"Now go to it. If you see Bule Rowe, you tell that AWOL fuck to get his lazy, craven ass in here. And don't tell him he's being discharged. I want to do that."

Todd Hargens, Buck Mifflin, Belmont and Moffat, Nina, Ted Williams, all the actors, the curse of the second director's assistant and all the replacements over the five seasons, Charlie Houghton, the guest writers, Dozier, Rowe... so many more. He dreaded the notion of giving bad news, and of giving sudden, awkward goodbyes, but perhaps these things were needed. They bore more weight than his dread. Emery stood before the network executive, pondering what else he might say, and if there was anything that could be done beyond exiting as a stray.

"Your uh, your wings are showing," Emery said. Merrill paused at this and then craned his head around, seeing the large, veiny wings that had protruded from his back. Bored, he briefly fluttered them. This gave off a fanning, papery sound that made Emery's ears seem to vibrate. Merrill returned his attention to the writer.

"So they are."

"Mr. Merrill—"

"That would be 'Lieutenant', private."

"No, sir. It would not. I believe I am done with you," Emery said. The confederate executive stared at him a moment, designing response. Emery stood, lifting the Colt from atop the desk and, with a moment of steadying and certainty, he fired the weapon, killing his commanding officer and abandoning his service to the War Department. High treason. Emery gave a final salute and set himself at ease. In a moment, the gun was gone. His hand was empty.

"I'll go find Bernie, I suppose."

CUT TO:

INT. BERNIE DOZIER'S OFFICE - AFTERNOON

A mid-sized office on the second floor, overlooking a parking lot. The office is untidy, and there is a dead potted plant in the corner.

EMERY and BERNIE are both present. EMERY leans against a wall of the second story office as BERNIE sits at his desk with a telephone receiver to his ear. Smoke lingers in the air.

ECU on BERNIE's face, the awkwardness of momentary shame.

BERNIE:

All right. Thank you. No, it's clear. Look I'll- just give me some time. I'll call back. I gotta think. Yeah, bye.

(hangs up)

So, it's bad. Nothing they can do on our behalf. They don't want to touch this. Fucking Nichols has spoken and... that prick has never liked us. They shouldn't have called you in without me. I needed to be there.

EMERY:

(sighing)

We did everything he wanted, and then some. Still pushed us over the cliff. It was the hour time-slot, I think. Broke the camel's back.

BERNIE:

I guess there's nothing else to say, Em. We're fired. We're both fired. You and me. Rowe. Your writers. Everybody. Right now, and that's it.

ZOOM TO:

The cigarette. The cigarette burning into its yellow filter. The yellow filter to his mouth. The stinking moment to his nerve. He exhaled but air through his grimace. Slowly, Emery snuffed the cigarette in the ashtray on the desk. He then reached into his pocket for another cigarette, stopped, and shook his hand a moment, staving off the intensity of his anger. He had suspected something bad was going to happen when the network had shortened the season to eleven episodes. He had thought the diminished episode roster was due to the longer format, to keep the same budget, but he should have known another cancellation was en route.

"How pissed off are you? At me, I mean," Dozier asked.

"Not very. It's all right, Bernie. I more want to yell at myself than you."

"Neh, I'd deserve it more."

"No, I know you put in a lot of effort these last two seasons."

"Sure."

"And I know your ass was on the line here, this time, so... are you really off the network now? All the way out?"

"Well, I gambled and I lost. They want me to finish out the holidays, first. Catch up and finalize everything for our show and get all the rights contracted away into the void. You know, get everyone paid and settled and mop up the floor. I'll be unemployed just in time for the New Year. But I saved. I'm okay for now."

"What about Rowe?"

"Rowe's an old boy. Been around town a few times. You know how those guys do things. He'll never struggle for work, or do much of any, but I think he actually wants to retire. He's talked about it a few times. He's tired, and I can't blame him. Your apprentice there, Belmont, he was approached by two other shows this year. He declined, of course, but now that we're getting the guillotine, well, Larry has options. Moffat, too."

"Larry does all right by _The Gentleman_ alone. They've made him a staff-writer. His bills are fine. What about Buck?"

"No idea. I know over the summer he signed a deal to direct a picture with MGM. It's for sometime next year. Asked me to co-produce, but I just didn't have the capital. Maybe now he can focus on it more."

"And then there's me."

"Right," Dozier said in a nod.

"What about me?"

"Well, remember _The Turquoise Chain_? What you said in the closer? Something like 'Man makes his destiny with wit and work, and when those-'"

"'-and when these will not suffice, he falls on that great muse of the ages: Luck,'" Emery finished, sour.

"Yeah, that one stuck with me, I guess. I think it summarizes the both of us pretty well right now."

"Luck, huh?"

"Sure, wouldn't you like some? Good time for it to show up."

"I'll take that you remembered that line from _Turquoise_ as a compliment. It's a shame no one will ever see that episode."

"For now. Maybe they'll toss it on the air during a slow week sometime, or feed it to the reruns in a year or two."

"But not us."

"Yeah, not us. I'm sorry, Em."

Beth would be quiet for a time. Despite that Emery would feel much guilt, this was canon for her. In those periods of Emery's unrest and fidgety, occupational scouring, she had always become quiet, attempting to leave him be, to let him focus on his task. It was a necessary, loving sort of abandonment, and unavoidable. There was an unfortunate paradox there, however. Those spans of time in which he was most lost were the same spans in which he needed her most. His love for her was keen, but his mood and activity could be exasperating to her, and he knew this. Emery was too much, too often. It was somewhat the narrative of his life.

He accepted the quiet, the distance she kept when he was in the midst of certain failures. She kept her opinion on the matter to herself. There was a little shame in Emery over this. He would see it happen again, and would try to make the best of it, to throw himself into his work with vehemence, which would only distance him from her the more. She had been through as much as Emery. The pending, second lawsuit from Banry, a thing that had probably served as a catalyst in getting the show cancelled, was draining him of cheer by the day, and Beth seemed distant herself. Perhaps it did not need to be this way. The show was cancelled, but this time, the cancellation was a true grave. It was over. Moving on from this ending, together, might be exactly what the Ashers needed. He had a time slot in his heart that was now vacant, and he so wanted his family to get in there, to nest and dig deep, and quickly. Perhaps it was time to make that happen. Emery hadn't touched his wife in months.

The sentimental served him no purpose. He needed to possess himself, take his dismissal and return it with action. He needed to make good. Living full measure meant the complete cease of whining and flowery emotion. It meant finding the reality of a thing and lording over it. Being a man who remains warm to family, like his father had been. Emery made a quiet vow not to be dismal in his home this time around. He did not want to rerun the foul mood and disparate complaint of the previous cancellations. These were poltergeists that had several times descended upon his household, and he would not numb his home with such gloominess again. This cancellation was permanent, and he would come out of it a good husband and father, not an alien with whom his family would struggle to interact. He would get moving quickly and keep her love very close to him. His goal was manifest: Love and be loved. Keep the veil of setback and his crawling, sinewy doubt from setting their awful roots in his home. Beth and the girls deserved better.

"Listen, Bernie. Everyone's off for the holiday. Let's give 'em Christmas, then give the word a day or so after," Emery advised.

"Fine by me. So long as everyone knows by the 28th. We don't want anyone on the crew showin' up to a condemned set and throwing a panic."

The matter of Emery's reputation was a different struggle, and he had yet to find a resolve in the matter. Orson Banry was a vengeful man. Emery's name had been tarnished unduly, but the public, no matter how much they liked or disliked someone, never thought much about the undue. The information they had to decipher on most matters was deciphered for them, and often in an exacerbating, sensational way. Many had listened, in late November, to the string of words on the news: " _Other Side_ host Emery Asher has once again found himself in hot water after further complaints of plagiarism." The term 'complaint' was often used instead of 'claim'. The two words had different meanings. You could claim you had been wronged, and maybe you had, or maybe you had not, but a complaint usually only surfaced _after_ a wrongdoing. The word 'complaints' in the broadcast about Emery's legal trouble, aside from being unduly plural, gave the connotation that someone was complaining _about_ his chicanery, not simply alleging there may or may not have been any. This swayed the public a bit, just enough to make suspicion from scruple. One was far more damaging than the other.

All of Los Angeles had read the headline: "Plagiarism Not Confined to This World, Can Exist on Other Side." This condemned Emery as being guilty long before the lawsuit concluded. A headline stating that plagiarism _can exist_ on his show meant there was little question. 'Can' inferred a result, as if the tests were in, and plagiarism had been detected. Emery was being called a thief, even though the article's headline was a summation of Orson Banry's contention. The safe subjectiveness of 'can' kept the headline in the clear, but the damage was done. Headlines were the compass for a reader's opinion. They were brazen and clear and considered by many, dangerously, to be infallible summaries.

The words spun and turned and created little vortexes into which his name was pulled and dirtied on many levels. Why would the public be duped by such an obvious ploy of sensationalism and semi-conscious slander? Orson Banry was angry, yes, but was mostly just drumming up attention for himself. He truly thought Emery had stolen material from him. Emery found it surprising that so many seemed to be falling for the claim. Perhaps this preyed upon the same process by which children so easily believed in the existence of a fat, red-suited man that could fly and who did so for the express purpose of giving them gifts for mere good behavior. There were certain manners and habits of humanity that gave rise to outlandish myths, and these myths, as ugly and sordid as they could be, had an aptitude for creating things both beautiful and wondrous. All that was needed was rumor, and all rumor needed to gain societal strength was repetition. The more talk a thing was given, the more believable that thing became, and a sensational story was always given talk. It was the creator of legend and mass suspicion. It made _Other Side_ tales and paranoia. Repetition of the fantastic was the varnish in a campaigning politician's trunk of tricks, and it could be enlightening or condemning.

The public heard and read these statements, this talk, and the damage was done in the mere existence of nouns in proximity of one another: Other Side, Asher, Plagiarism. If you heard them enough, the words became common together, and empowered one another. If you read them enough, the words were an equal and acceptable alternate to truth. The final cancellation had come almost in unison with these headlines and broadcasts. Many people surmised these to be purposely correlated. The rumor surfaced that he had been fired, and his show shut down, because he stole from others.

Dozier lifted a flask from his desk drawer and, wiggling it back and forth to indicate little whiskey was left, spoke with finality.

"Say our goodbyes to the show?" he asked.

"I wouldn't mind saying those, sure," Emery responded. Dozier uncapped, took a swig, and handed the last of the whiskey to Emery. For a moment, Bernie grimaced and clutched at his stomach.

"God... I hate 'em. I really hate 'em. Rest of that whiskey is yours."

"Still with the ulcers?"

"Yeah. Miserable trouble. Never goes away, you know."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

"They're a problem, but honestly, they're the least of mine right now. The big one is just that I'm impotent here," Dozier said then, "I can't do anything more. But you... truth is, if you get to your typewriter, like you do, and Rowe follows suit, there's maybe a chance you could pull another Asher miracle and get your show-"

"No. No, I don't want it anymore. Too much betrayal in the workings. Maybe not in the personal way, but just as cruel. Or at least, after the fact. And too much destruction, Bernie. This... this all just gets our hopes up and then pulls our guts out. It's too unfair and... there's so much pressure."

"I get you there."

"And it just keeps turning on you and you can only handle so much before that wears you down," Emery said.

"Yeah, I feel pretty worn down about now," Dozier agreed. Emery lifted the flask and drained the remaining whiskey, little more than a shot. The goodbye was finalized in a sort of alcoholic tradition. The anti-toast.

"We should just let it die," Emery said.

The ex-executive producer and once-avid network man sat behind his desk, nodding with a touch of misery, though some resolve.

"All right. I don't blame you for that at all," he said.

"You know," Emery added, "I uh, have it on good faith that you keep a different bottle in your bottom drawer, something real top shelf, for special visits. That true, Bernard?" Dozier chuckled at this.

"Eh, yes and no. It's in the bottom drawer, sure. Pint of vodka. It's Victor, nothin' special. Certainly not top shelf. I actually keep the cheaper shit for myself, not the good stuff." Emery's mouth curled.

"You drink that straight?" he asked.

"A little, here and there. Chase with Bromo. I can't, most days. And only my aunt calls me Bernard, Em."

"Well, screw it. What say you and I drink it?"

"Right now?"

"Yeah. All of it." Dozier thought this over a moment before opening the drawer.

"That's an idea. Not sure if I like it much, but I'm willing to get behind it, for now. You'll be drinking more than I will. I'm out of Bromo."

And so the temporarily useless men had mild swigs from the pint and talked out a few details regarding the cancellation and their personal lives. The major rights to the show were still possessed by Emery, but now that the show was dead, and considering he did not want to attempt reviving it, he might sell off those rights to CBS and be done with it entirely. They would likely pay him a decent sum, and they could archive the show and possibly push it to reruns eventually. That could be future money and Emery would get a piece of it. The show was now a carcass, and it needed to be mummified a certain way if it was going to be preserved and seen again. Emery might need the money in the years to come, and CBS might be more inclined to give the show subsequent airings if they owned it outright. The network would likely own the show and all things _Other Side_ soon enough. Dozier mentioned going up north to visit his sisters in a week, in time for New Years, and of spending Christmas with a woman he had been seeing, and who he seemed particularly fond of keeping quietly to himself.

"Bernie, I'm not judging, but... you're divorcing, right?"

"No, I wouldn't do that."

"Then I gotta ask... why the other girls? I know you've got a wife at home, and if there's no divorce, what's the story?" Bernie thought about this a moment before choosing to answer.

"Doesn't like me."

"Your wife?"

"Yeah. Estelle has never liked me. Not even when we got engaged."

"That's terrible. Was there a baby on the way, then?"

"That's the story. We didn't even know each other, really. But she lost it pretty late, and... Damn, this is getting a little personal."

"No problem, I shouldn't have asked."

"Naw, it's... sort of nice to tell somebody about it."

"Well, if you'd like to talk, I have two ears."

"By the time that happened, with losin' the baby, we were married and she's... very Catholic."

"I see. That's a difficult position."

"She doesn't mind when I see other women because then I leave her alone."

"That's awful."

"It's wonderful, actually. For a long time, there were no other women, just Estelle and I, and like I said, she's never liked me. So... we don't really fool around together more than maybe once every couple of years. Hardly ever. It's funny. That's the only time I feel like I'm cheating. When I'm, you know, being with Estelle. So, it's complex, but it's real simple. I'm married and I'm single. Best or worst of both worlds, I suppose. Estelle would see other men if she were bolder. I wouldn't blame her. It'd be good for her, I think, because I'm not so great and nobody should be stuck like that, you know, but that's not really her way of thinking."

"I'm sorry, Bernie. I didn't know your home life was so... abstract. Marriage has been much better at my house."

"Good. Hold on to that. When something goes right, you have to keep it close and be worth it. You uh, got any plans for Christmas? I'm changing the subject, here." Emery smiled at this.

"Yeah, a few plans. Beth and I are going to see Bing Crosby at the Coconut Grove tomorrow night, and my oldest is helping with makeup for a play at her school early in the day on Christmas Eve. My shopping list is a daddy's list, and I am necessarily au curant with the season. And,as always, my birthday falls on Christmas, so I get to celebrate these two things in one mode. I've got four busy days to go."

"That's a curse. Buddy of mine had his birthday and his wedding anniversary both on Thanksgiving. The priest and the pilgrims two took away all his thunder."

"That's unfortunate."

"You a big giver on Christmas?" Bernie asked. Emery grunted.

"To a fault. We'll have a nice day with the kids, is the thing, and I prefer to spoil people on the day. Enjoy it all and have the day out, which the nature of it. And then I'll likely spend the late night at my desk with a bottle of correction fluid. With persistence, I'll be able to stimulate the new pilot I have to start soon. Christmas or not, and birthday be damned, I'm in a serious bind if I don't find something soon. I'll probably start something tonight."

"Tonight, huh? That's getting back on the horse quick, even for you."

"Shows don't write themselves. If I'm gonna have to pitch something in the near future, I'd better have a story to two, and figure out what I'm pitching."

"You know, it's true what they say about you, Asher. It's all true: You are indeed television's last angry young man."

"I'll be forty in less than a week. I'm not so young anymore, or angry."

"Oh, then let me welcome you aboard the middle-aged train. You're somewhat late. You can pick up your ulcers at the baggage check."

Emery left the office after relieving Dozier of near half the pint's content. Bernie had only two small sips and had needed to cease drinking. The warmth in Emery's gut was now matched by the sting in his mind over the third and final cancellation. The weariness in his bones and temper, a thing that had become overwhelming in the last two years, was thankfully dissipating. It was over, really. He was screwed, but also free. There was a certain sense of liberation that Emery felt over the show being fastened into the electric chair and given its final moment to ride out the lightning. With this relief, however, was a dastardly sense of loss, and a sharp point in his heart regarding his ability to write. He had begun to feel the weight of the production as more than simple pressure, but a sort of death knell, and while this was now behind him, for better or worse, he could not but feel he had failed to navigate the realm of television, for once.

It seemed simple enough that a crew party would in order, a fun, drunken, energetic, and then sad and somber and resigned party. This would have to come soon, but the holiday would make that difficult. Perhaps just after.

Larry had missed his chance for an Emmy, which was a shame, and Moffat's side-project scripts had petered out with little luck. Emery's family was at home, the three girls, but his family was on set, all the busy hands and personnel. He had warmth in him when hearing the word 'crew'. It no longer meant the conglomeration of various workers to get a job done. It had a familial tone to him now, a sense of fellowship. It was Buck spreading the flu to everyone on the damn set, season one. It was all the gabbing about what a legendary prick Lance Mayor had been during the shoot of the episode he starred in, season three. It was signing Nina's cast after she fell down an embankment while shooting three short scenes in San Francisco. It was even the bruise on Emery's head from Todd's drop of the boom mic, three times in one day, late in the previous season. These goodbyes were necessary for Emery as much as they were for anyone else. Goodbyes were the way things died, and without them, death lingered beyond its use. He would let them have Christmas, and inform everyone of the cancellation soon after. He would throw a party for all.

Emery reached his car and, knowing the coldness December had likely placed inside, decided not to drive just yet. He would leave the car in the lot for an hour or so and work off the drunkenness he had taken on in Bernie's soon-to-be empty office. Fuzzed in vodka, Emery set out for a chilled walk through the studio neighborhood, and perhaps beyond. He had studio chores extant for the coming week, but after the frayed ends had been clipped, he might not visit Television City for some time, or plausibly ever again. The future was gray and fastened to the brutish ballast of his past awards and punches.

The evening air codded his lungs in a blanket of smoke as he walked. He felt briefly to be less a celebrity and more a patent citizen. This was an unexpected modification, but being tossed out on one's ear was an accountable diminisher of a man's mood. The outskirts of Television City were less clean, and the priority of this area was more in league with taverns and small businesses, some of which catered to the nearby studios while others seemed more propped in the general. This was one of the muddled, high-contrast berths in which Los Angeles television and her cameras met the rest of the world, a hasty rampart between the makers and the watchers. Emery felt as if he had been achromatized, much alike with the drab weather in which he now walked. His mood was the sort of beast that carried a flag, proud of its potency. No walk would sate it. He needed to feel sorry for himself, just a little, and reflect until the thing slept. To bring himself up, Emery would have to paddle through the recent months and put labels on all the little mistakes.

The bars were scattered here and there, but in his buzzed state, he kept clear of them. Arriving home drunk would displease Beth, and embarrass him in front of the girls, who were now old enough to judge Emery's drinking somewhat accurately, especially Rebecca. She was running for her junior high's presidency, a campaign that indulged Emery's heart much, despite that Rebecca's school would likely intervene and obstruct, being that she was not male. Long ago, Emery had been the president of his own middle school. Those days were more than gone; they were jurassic in age. They had not only passed, but had been shattered and crushed to cinders by the weight of world war and a hearty career brimming with hazard, grand achievement, failure, and spans of ill-being. The only nanny that could keep those young memories sharp was a racy and energetic ego.

As a child, sharing his birthday with Christmas had been little trouble. He was raised Jewish, and the Christmas holiday, so revered by his classmates, was but a comma in the span of his school year. He had enjoyed the good feel of this holiday, though had not been allowed by the doctrine of his religion to celebrate it. Beth had changed so many things in his life, or else he had changed so much for her. A Unitarian, though admittedly quite fallen, he could both study and celebrate this holiday with whatever abandon he felt to uphold, and there was much of it. He loved Christmas. The children looked forward to it with more emphasis than they did most things, even their own birthdays. Emery had come to do the same.

The German tradition of the tree was a pleasant one, and adorning it with small trinkets and baubles was a fastidious sort of fun. For Emery, the silly (but almost necessary) recitation of _A Visit from St. Nicholas_ , as well as the singing of various carols, was a touch too heartwarming and overly sentimental. There was an odd, potent sort of nostalgia involved for others, however, and he had no real right to judge what made them so happy in the otherwise awful bleakness of December. A small group of people celebrating in an odd way could be looked upon as asinine or abnormal, but when the whole damn town did it, there was reason to use the word "magic" in all of the Christmas ads and billboards. That sensation of the otherworldly, in the cheery phantasms of generosity and celebration, conjured moods and could alter one's stock among others. Christmas and America seemed to operate in a fitting arrangement, and there was, due to the popularity of Santa Claus stories and legend-based traditions, an element of fantasy in the very air. There was magic enough to warrant the term.

Rebecca's school was putting on _A Christmas Carol_. Emery had always enjoyed this story, even though his daughter was only working backstage in the production. The purchasing of presents was a thrill, and knowing there were two wrapped boxes addressed to him, then sitting beneath the needle-laden tree, captured him into the general melee of the season with relish. One of them looked like a box of typewriter ribbons. The shape was a match for his brand.

In four days, he would sit at the base of the tree, unemployed, and admire his girls as they opened the gifts settled there. He would open his few gifts and try not to think about his inurned show. He would focus on his daughters, on his wife, these remaining reasons for being who he was and for continuing, for having a heart.

Beth would be so pleased with what he had found for her. It was wrapped and now nestled against the few other presents at the base of the tree. Through Buck Mifflin, he had gained knowledge of a used-bookstore owner in the San Fernando Valley who had a glass case full of exorbitantly rare books. Emery had driven there with Larry nearly three weeks ago on a Christmas mission, and he had succeeded. Beth would find wrapped in dainty paper the hardbound, first-edition _Collected Works of John Keats_ , nearly sixty years old and in wondrous condition. Though she had not mentioned Keats in nearly ten years, he remembered a scathing conversation back in college when she had castigated Emery's abundant praise of Whitman, and proceeded then to declare irishman Keats one of the greatest poets to have ever walked the Earth. It was their first real argument, short and inconsequent as it had been. The book would be a nice gift that would, after initial reception, direct her back to their earlier days, even for a moment. She would adore the book, he thought, and it was this sense of pleasing others that Emery would rely on to get him through the season, until he could find work again.

Emery was also four days from his 40th birthday, and already had been put through more than one meat-grinder, more than one unsettling sprint through the minefield of television. This was more than most endured in a lifetime. The trick was to keep moving, to sprint more when tired than when energetic, to burst his lungs streaking ahead where other runners tired and fell to gasps. He needed to move and jump when the explosions came, keep his head above his feet and get to secure ground. This was with the typewriter, a simple device that let him tap into his very joy with a tale. The clacks and worn keys were busy ants before a busy man with all the world between. He was self-appointed in his art, and he loved it, after all.

In an hour, his walk having left behind those occasional bumbles of misbalance, Emery caught sight of a small figurine in the window of a pawn shop. He entered the shop and relieved the object from the narrow shelf, bringing it to the counter. The object would be another small gift to place under the tree, wrapped in whatever paper he chose. This was more of a blind gift. He knew she enjoyed figurines, but had no idea if this one was anything she might enjoy. He was making a stab in the holiday dark because the item was pretty and Beth was pretty. That was all. He felt sneaky, which was a better sensation than what he could have been feeling. It was while counting the money before the pawn broker that he was recognized, and consequently, shocked.

"Henry Asher, right?" Emery glanced up quickly upon hearing the name of his father.

"What?"

"From _The Other Side._ You're Henry Asher." Understanding crept through him: The similarity of sound, of names, on the tip of someone's brain.

"Uh yes, that's right, friend," he said, imagining himself as his father.

"I love the show. Was that everything?" Yes, that was everything. The show was now in the past. He stood in a pawn shop, perhaps symbolically. He was without job and now rummaged in his mind for ways to clean himself, to maintain his artistic hygiene, though not monetarily; he needed to handle himself spiritually, emotionally, and with as little damage as possible.

"Yes, that's all," he said of the figurine.

"It's a cute one. For the missus?"

"It is, yes."

"Ah, good man. You got a great show, Mr. Asher. Never miss it. Tonight, right?"

"Uh, yes. Tonight. Eight sharp," Emery lied. At eight p.m. on CBS, people would discover that _The Other Side_ was not airing, and that it had been replaced with _The CBS Fantasy Night_ , a one-hour show that would exhibit some new animated thing about _Rudolph the Reindeer_ designed to giddy up the kids, followed with carols by _The Ben Carlson Singers_. One could be sure these productions would be chocked with commercial breaks to tease out various products from all the major retail players that sought to create a public acquaintance with Christmas. Some of these products, like Vesper Soda, sought to align themselves with purchasers in a way that might make the soda seem like religious tradition. Airing the special was a smart move on the network's part.

When confronted with Christmas, fans of _The Other Side_ would temporarily forget the show they had come to admire, especially with excited kids to contend with, and by the time these fans realized the full cancellation, in the weeks to come, their attention would be drained from the holiday, itself, and the energetic fizz of a new year. After this, there would be nothing that could be done but whine, and CBS would have finalized their decision on another show to take up the slack of the time slot. The network would have easier sailing with the cancellation, thanks to the holidays. They did not want another round of Emery's righteous campaigning and complaint.

"Well, all right. Tonight it is. I'll see ya on the _Other Side_ , then."

"Sure thing," Emery said, smiling and weak. The broker counted and then deposited the money in his register and began writing out the receipt.

"I hope the missus smiles when she opens it," he said when done, handing over the figurine without bag, along with the hastily scrawled receipt. Emery wanted to cry, but then changed his mind and did not. He wanted to tell the man to shut his mouth. He wanted less to occur than what did. He wanted more to happen than could happen. For the moment, he wanted to be sober and go home.

"Uh, thanks. I think she will," he said with a false cheer. As the writer reached the door, the pawn-broker added another sentiment to the mire of emotion in Emery's mind.

"Merry Christmas, Mr. Asher."

The air was cold and evening was approaching. He could feel the slight perturbation in his knee as he walked. The injury was long gone, but cold weather could return an amount of brief agitation to the knee. Emery made the long walk to his car, faster as he went, and started the engine. After warming up for a few minutes, he pulled out of the lot. His body was a stinking sort of entity that exuded smoke, sweat, and the fumes of cheap vodka. He would go home and bathe, eat, and then settle in to watch television with his girls. After the daughters were in bed, he would tell Beth about the cancellation. It was a cold night and there was more than one form of weather encroaching on the Asher home, but the night could have been worse. Tomorrow, he would take the family out for a day of fun and frivolity.

A week later, after the goodbye party with crew and with Emery giving much thought to the future, the network did choose to go back on a particular resolve. They chose to let the remaining episodes of the fifth season reach the air according to schedule, minus the episode that would have gone out during the Christmas week. The show being aired to its completion pleased Emery and the now ex-crew, but the airing of the remaining season was done more to sate sponsors who had invested in the episodes and requested air-time, than to keep alive a thing they now saw as dead matter. A brief change in the credit animations allowed the final episode to air with a dedication to Solomon Jamison. The opposite to crashing a wine bottle against the bow of a new, seaworthy craft, this dedication to Sol and the last authentic run of the credits were, for the most part, the true chiseling of an epitaph over the resting place of things that had once lived well.

### ACT III

**Chapter Twenty-Nine**

He had brought the mail along, that he might delve into it at some point during the vacation, though he had already read the loose collection of letters and offers by the time the plane reached New York. Several of these letters contained details and nuances that needed to be ironed out and given thought. He sat in the uncomfortable wooden chair outside the cabin at Cayuga Lake, sipping Old Forester and going over the offers again. Gaining a buzz during the day, in spring warmth and sunlight, outdoors, was a savored treat and one he enjoyed much. Vivian and Rebecca were inside, sitting on the floor and slowly piecing together a rather large puzzle. Beth had driven into town to purchase some particular amenities she needed.

They family had gone for a nature hike in the morning, something that Emery found to contain a certain peak of nostalgia for him, and though William had not made it to the lake that year, it felt as if he were present, so strong were Emery's memories of past visits to the unchanging place. Rebecca and Vivian, however, were not impressed with the vacation. They had spent more time working over their puzzle than taking account of their surroundings, bored as the two girls were. There was a sad truth in that his daughters found Cayuga to be slow and meaningless, out-of-the-way, and never in the mode to live up to their father's descriptions. Emery made his trips to Cayuga Lake sound as if he had discovered the fabled and unguarded city of gold, but the girls found this place to be damp air, common spiders, moss with little color riding the scent of rotting wood, and there were few other children present. Really, the only interesting thing they had discovered was that bread molded a brownish-orange there, rather than the blue color encountered in California.

Cayuga Lake was more a place for people that wanted to set out their boats for a weekend and then sit there, pointlessly floating, or perhaps fishing in the slight. Most visited in the summer, so the current state of the place was noticeably quiet and sparse. This was a certain form of torture to Rebecca and Vivian. The two daughters were bored, having never formed the same sorts of memories he had, when young. There was no nostalgia to spice the place for them. He understood their boredom and had concluded that this would be the last time he brought his daughters to Cayuga Lake. The summer stamping ground, in coming years, would be a small retreat for the parents solely.

Emery had been invited to many places for speaking engagements, and with a touch of reluctance, began accepting a line-up for a lecture circuit. The most ambitious of these engagements was to take place in Hong Kong. The last time he had visited that quarter of the world, it had been to kill Japanese soldiers in gulches and atop large, densely vegetated hills. Now he would be extolling the nature of television and discussing the way things were going with programming in general. He was capable with the subject and he had already accepted many speaking engagements in the wake of the cancellation. They paid a small amount each, though a run of them would add up quickly, and pay quite well. A decent year's wage could be made in less than two months, so long as he could travel and speak that much, and provided he continued being relevant enough be given speaking engagements. This could be maintained for a short while, giving him time to find a steadier job, another show. It would save the Ashers this year, but doubtful would it continue for long.

With a careful eye, Emery had begun setting up somewhat of a tour, by choosing each engagement specifically by neck-of-the-woods and week. Sometimes even by the very day. In a month, he would depart for Baltimore, and for nearly five weeks, he would give over two dozen lectures across the globe. There might be more lectures if they came along and fit into the schedule. He had a month to write in comfort before beginning the tour, and would then write in a scatter while on the road, but until the tour was over, he had no real ability to accept anything that required his full attention. His larger duty now was to outline what he was going to speak about. He needed a few lectures nailed down and memorized, free of potential conjecture and prattling, and a definite outline for some worthy talking points he might use to bridge certain lulls.

The first and thickest letter outlined something that Emery had initially thought of interest. He was being offered another television show, which was a bit of a dream. He had continually hoped and waited for such an offer. Unfortunately, this particular offer was quite specifically bad. There were his standards to keep in mind, and at least a dollop of integrity to maintain, and the show being offered was embarrassing, among other problems. A team of three executive producers at ABC wanted to bring _The Other Side_ to their network. This was an excellent idea, but had obstacles. He had sold the rights to _The Other Side,_ and the nature of CBS' ownership undermined the idea of taking it to another network. To accept this new offer, Emery would have to re-design every bone in the animal's body. The show would have to be changed so heavily in setup that it would not closely resemble _The Other Side_ , and the name would have to change. It would be a facsimile of _The Other Side_ that would exhibit a different face and credentials. They wanted Emery to host and write this new form of the show, though he was not being offered creative control. If he accepted, he would answer to someone creatively, and that someone had already been chosen. This executive's idea for the theme and format of the new show was both bizarre and unlikely to ever reach the air.

CUT TO:

EXT. STONEHENGE - LATE NIGHT

The tall stones and surrounding, grassy field sit beneath a starry sky.

Slowly, we see the stones brighten by a growing bonfire in the middle of the main circle. No one is about. We cut to the bonfire circle. From the darkness comes a man, a DRUID in full cloak, toward the fire. We can not see his face, just the hands and the cloak. He carries a bundle of herbs and, as he reaches the fire, tosses this bundle into the flames. They rush higher for a moment. The camera shakes from the short surge of power this creates. Once the flames have settled, we see the quiet druid draw back his hood, exposing his face to us.

DRUID ASHER:

Greetings friends. I come to you from the great well of history. In this hub of the supernatural, amidst these stones, the source of magic and the realm of fantasy are not fiction, but fact. I have lived these thousands of years with one purpose: To share what I have seen with those who would listen. I have seen much, and I've traveled long and far to reach these enchanted stone figures. They contain a great, hidden power. Here, I can tell you that the forgotten world of magic is still ever strong and ever sharp. Sit with me a spell, and I'll share with you those stories of people and events that few have seen or known. Sit with me, if you would seek the other-worldly, and experience these... _Stories from the Stones_.

FADE TO:

EXT. CAYUGA LAKE - 4:00 PM

The resort in a quiet phase with few visitors.

EMERY sits in the chair outside the rental cabin near the lake's edge.

EMERY:

(after a sip and wince)

Christ, why not just film a block of swiss?

CUT TO:

A comfortable chair. Smoke lilting up from an ashtray. The breeze meeting Emery's slight laughter from the idea of a particular program. He dismissed the ridiculous pitch and would decline the offer in a civil way soon after vacation. He was not begging yet; there was enough money to carry him for some time, especially with the upcoming tour. Emery crossed one leg over the other and set the letter aside with a sigh.

Cayuga Lake had been many Summers of Emery's life, but in the wake of his show's cancellation, he had needed a way to balance himself. With this in mind, he had brought his family to the lake for their annual vacation months early. It was near the end of April, and still quite cold. The snow had melted, but little more than that.

Two months prior, while somewhat ignoring (and winning) Banry's second lawsuit, Emery had given his lawyer the task of looking into his deal with Pacific Pictures, for the purpose of seeing if there was a somewhat safe fashion in which he might tell them to go fuck themselves. His lawyer assured him he could get out of the deal with only minimal damage, and Emery had begun this process in his spare time, but now that _The Other Side_ was officially deceased, he was forced to view this arrangement with Pacific without his usual reservation. He needed to see the deal, not with his dark, brown eyes, those Beth admired, but with his lesser, green eyes. Money was going to become quite a pressure in the coming year. Pacific, of course, had been notified he was seeking to leave the arrangement, and they no longer wore velvet gloves when he approached. The commandment they had given was clear: Two scripts by the end of June. No more waiting. They wanted the fully revised, final scripts, with the changes they had asked, or else they would put him in his nicest suit and throw him into an alligator swamp of litigation. The third script, _The Passing of the Hand,_ was out of his hands entirely, and he had no idea what had become of the story, but at least they were not hounding him over yet more changes to it.

Emery had been quick to complete this irritating assignment, and both scripts had been doctored to what he felt was their liking. Pacific was still not satisfied, however. The trouble with the scripts was now obvious to Emery: Hollywood had asked an Emmy winner to write a few movies for them, but they wanted pure drama, not speculation with moral tale. They had hired a veteran but did not want his war stories. They had hired the writer of _The Other Side_ , but did not want that side. They were sick of Emery, angry at his failure to give them what their paperwork stated he wrote, and they would have likely dropped the whole thing and kicked him out of the arrangement much sooner, had it not been for the fact that his television program had won three more Emmys in the interim, two of which were due to Emery's writing. His name would have a box-office draw. Some slack had been granted him, but his supposed misfires had now gone beyond the limits of that extra leniency.

The stage-plays for _All the System_ and _Coronach_ were still daunting him. He had somewhat given up on _Coronach_ , but _All the System_ , his first true success in the television world, would not leave him be. The story wanted a stage and live players. He fed the idea in his mind often, and could not be rid of it. The stage-play for _All the System_ had become a dog that would neither come nor heel, would not even allow him the pleasure of petting its modest coat. What was it about theater that he could not grasp? The essence of stage writing was ostensibly the same format as a teleplay, but without camera directives and with an older nomenclature. The most palpable difference was that the stage-play format was written for actors and a director, while a teleplay was written for directors and producers. It seemed that the auxiliary intent of the latter had trained him away from the stage, and attempting to write for theater was wreaking a small havoc on Emery's mind.

The project was out of reach, always. He refused to believe he simply did not understand the medium, or by his basest measure, did not have the chops to work a play into being. Emery had never met a project he could not complete in some way satisfactory to him, if given time. The annoyance of having yet been able to satisfy the play, to transfer _All the System_ into a performance for a live audience, had long ago usurped the position of prowler. The thing would not let him be, and would not permit him to finish. Now that he was actively writing and rewriting the story, the dog of this project no longer ignored him, but had begun to nip and bark and cast dispersions upon its master. The trouble was damn haunting and nothing seemed to work, and now, his trouble with Pacific Pictures only added to this frustration. Had he somehow become a man that couldn't finish what he started? Only six years ago, he had been notoriously productive and had been considered by many to be prolific. That had been his reputation, but now?

FADE TO:

EXT. CARLSON'S BUICK AND MOLDEN - DAY

A series of shining, new cars on a sunny day. Streamers hang from light poles. There is a film crew setting up for a commercial shoot.

We see EMERY standing with a handful of cash in the middle of the Molden lot. He sighs and looks off camera.

UNKNOWN VOICE, O.C.:

We're clear, Mr. Asher. All ready. Smile, though.

We see EMERY frown and then stretch into a phony smile.

A SECOND VOICE, O.C.:

Okay, rolling. And... GO.

EMERY:

(raising eyebrow, imitating an Other Side monologue)

Hello folks, I'm Emery Asher, and I'd like to take this time to tell you about the '64 Molden Roadster. That's right, the new Roadster 6. This is a vehicle so smooth and gracious one gets the sensation they're on the most relaxing of cruises. Until you press down the accelerator. Then you're in for a real thrill. Whether you're looking for a reliable car for the family or else an adventure for one, Molden's newest Roadster has been designed with you in mind. Take the 6 out for a spin, and you'll see that the luxury of Molden's Roadsters is unparallel in the automotive world, and once you get behind the wheel, you just might find yourself on 'another side' of luxury, a place of imagination from which you won't want to return. Why, I, myself own one, and you should too. The Molden Roadster 6. America's pride and America's passion.

FADE TO:

The temporary nature of a daylight buzz slowly rising into drunkenness. A lit cigarette smoldering beside many extinguished ones. Relaxation disrobed life of its many hurdles and strains, but this was only a short con and never survived past its own brevity. At the moment, it had skinned itself to reveal a briefly wooden man beside a lake. Beth pulled up beside the cabin in the roadster. They had been amorous of late, numerous encounters of which he found himself strangely proud. There was no reason to suspect, at the outset of his forties, that he was not a lover to at least a competent degree, but he had somewhat married his work for a time, and the sexual drought he and Beth had undergone in the previous two years had begun to shame him. Being fired had, despite the negative repercussions, had proven to be somewhat of a boon to their love life.

"Excuse me, ma'am. Is your husband around?" Emery asked.

"He's away at the moment."

"I see. Perhaps you'd enjoy some company."

"Oh, how generous of you, sir. I'll likely be up quite late."

"I should keep that in mind and stop in for a visit when your family is asleep."

He watched as she went into the cabin with her small, brown bag of products, stopping for a moment to give him a goofy wiggle before closing the door behind her. He was happy with family, with the bare nature of it, the unceasing sense of connection it offered. He was pleased knowing he would feel the spilling of each season into this deepening kinship he had fostered with his wife and his daughters. Family was gumption, and it thrived in his bones as much as it did beyond him. They would keep coming, the years, and the family would continue changing and refining, and he felt lucky for this. It was an excellent way to live any sort of life. He needed only to keep providing, and if he could do this, his life with Beth and the girls would remain, to his rare, optimistic sense, inviolable.

The small, embarrassing breaches into the world of commercial endorsement brought in enough money to get by, and one of them had paid him with a new car. This had turned out well, as the Ashers already had two cars in their possession, Emery's Roadster 5 and Beth's Skylark. With Emery being given a Roadster 6 and a fair sum of money, they had been able to sell one of the older cars. While the nature of the advertising beast was a salivating and obvious one, the financial sense of doing the spots was beyond his ability to decline. He simply tried to accept the lesser of humiliations.

His promotion of Crest was a touch vain, he thought, but acceptable. He had been given more than one humorous comment on the whiteness of his teeth by reviewers in the past. It had become a jibe over the course of the five seasons, but a toothpaste commercial was not so obnoxious to him. Neither obnoxious were his appearances endorsing the University of Los Angeles, something in which he had been pleased to take part, though the pay for this was but good cheer, a value one might have trouble writing a check against. The job for Molden Automotive was tolerable to him, as it not only paid him quite well, but was a product he did, in fact, use and enjoy. When given the 6 model, he had sold his 5 model, making a bit more money out of the arrangement. Beth had chosen which of the older cars to sell, and she had opted to keep the Skylark, though it would have fetched more money were they to sell it.

Some of the commercials were tolerable to him. Not so acceptable, however, was his smiling face on the air preaching Liden's Hair Tonic (a product he knew to be garbage), an endorsement made worse by being aired almost exclusively on NBC during Hitchcock's show. This made Emery seem like an utter washout and he regretted having signed on to do it. He understood the company's stance on why the spots were aired during Hitchcock, but had he known he would be pandering that silly product during his previous competitor's program, Emery would have declined. Another disagreeable endorsement was the constantly-aired spot he did for Finch Brand Diapers, which was asinine. A peculiar facet of doing the commercial with Finch was that he was asked to write it. This had been a new endeavor for him, and one he enjoyed a little, brief as it was. It was all supposed to be good sport and humorous, and he supposed the diaper commercial did get him a laugh or two, but he still regretted taking the deal.

The offers for further commercial work came often, about two each week, and he did not enjoy being forced into taking some of them, but he had to pick his poisons. He had saved, been not been frugal with his money from _The Other Side_ (though had he not purchased the house outright, the Asher family would have had to move out in the near future). He had saved much, yes, but no amount of saving could have sufficed to support his eventual retirement and the tuition his daughters would soon enough require. The idea of a regular job outside of writing, after all that had happened, would have been a horrid and final admittance of failure-to-thrive in the very place in which he had learned to hunt. He had a skill, a significant and unique one, and not utilizing this personal science would be a deadening affair, one that would feel as if it were trying to pull his soul from his bones and toss it into the municipal dump.

The commercials would be taken, here and there, enough to keep saving. He did this in expectation of the particular sort of winter for which he was beginning to suspect the Asher family was due. He would, if all went well, rid himself of endorsement fallbacks eventually. If people could so quickly forget his show in the wake of its cancellation, as they seemed to, they could also forget his jocular, dull appearance advertising toothpaste and hair products.

Beth entered the realm of his lake-side reading, having exited the cabin. She dragged another wooden chair toward him, worked it beside his own, and sat down. He tapped his cigarette onto the ashtray and she reached for his whiskey, had a small drink.

"It's cold out. I should get my coat," she said before rising and leaving him again. A few moments passed and she returned in the light coat she had packed. There were three coats Beth had decided she needed. There was the thick coat, in case the snow was present, the stealthy coat, which was one for appearances, in the event they were to do much in public, and the light coat, more the indoor variety and an article she could wear in either slight cold or bare warmth. The cost of these coats now bore more meaning to him than when they were purchased. The Ashers would need to better scrutinize their expenses in the near future. Emery smiled at the over-preparedness of her and continued smoking his cigarette and reading the letters. She grew bored with sitting still however, and was in the mood for spoken exchange, rather than tepid, lake-side beingness.

"I've decided 'no' on the hot dogs tonight," she said.

"Oh, that tone is excellent. You've made the hot dog conclusion sound of great import."

"It is. You are what you eat. I don't want to become a hot dog."

"I would always refer to you as a frankfurter. I respect you."

"Go kill us a cow," she said. He laughed then.

"Oh?"

"Yes. Buy a gun. A mobster gun. And then find us a cow. Shoot steaks from its hide." He laughed harder at this, and nodded his head.

"You were just in town," he said.

"I know. I should have picked some up." Emery sighed with no real irritation.

"All right, I'll go the store shortly. I'll need cigarettes anyway. Maybe we should all go?"

"Well, I started up a fire inside and I don't trust leaving it. Someone should stay. But the girls could go. They'd like that."

"Done. Would you like a treat while I'm out? I know the girls will."

"What do you have in mind?"

"I don't know. What do you want? There's a bait shop on the way that sells salt water taffy. I know about you and taffy."

"Oh god, it'll smell like fish, though. No."

"I'm sure it won't."

"I might _think_ it does, though. It's the power of the mind."

"Red licorice, then," he suggested.

"Maybe for the girls."

"Ice cream?"

"That's it."

"All right, then. What sort? It has to be a small one; we don't have a freezer out here."

"Oh, you're so full of questions. Just get me whatever sophisticated, intellectual people would eat. Elitist ice cream. That's what I want."

"Elitist ice cream... I'm intrigued," Emery said.

"What do you imagine the ice cream critics would say? What's their choice?"

"Well, let me think... if it's ice-creaming with the Rockefellers, I think we're talking pistachio. It's a choice, robust ice cream, relegated to the more old-money, European society. Also, some of the powerful, American families. Good reviews all around."

"Yes. That's what I want, then."

"Done. Just remember to never be seen at parties that serve spumoni."

"No? I like spumoni."

"Spumoni is a damned crook. A corrupted whore and loudmouth. Spumoni is the social pariah of ice creams and not even fit for the troughs of pigs."

"How could you?!"

"Because I'm a realist, you; it's no coincidence that spumoni is the flavor of ice cream most often asked for by convicts on death row."

CUT TO:

EXT. CAYUGA LAKE, 1965 - LATE AFTERNOON

Undercranked clockwise pan, full circle, about 6 FPS, of the tall grasses beyond the edge of Cayuga Lake, the affectation of wind picking up and the staunch effect of late Spring upon the color of the world. We continue panning, still in lapse, past those cabins and their occupants, people walking into and out of frame, the occasional car floating by in the distance. We hear the normal-speed, overlaid calls of numerous birds, each heard with a slight echo. HIGH ANGLE SHOT from the boughs of a black walnut tree as three people enter frame. We see a boy of about twelve, a slightly younger girl, and an even younger girl of about six years old, walking from the cabin area into the nearby field. The three are without the company of adults.

DISSOLVE TO:

The twelve-year-old EMERY ASHER, being followed into the field by sisters REBECCA and VIVIAN ASHER. The three wear uniforms of the Confederacy, with the two girls being infantry, and EMERY wearing the uniform of a cavalry lieutenant. As the afternoon lifts at their hair and moves them into the field, the three appear comfortable with one another, soldiers on a hunt, and with much confidence. The leader of this group is the young boy, EMERY.

FADE TO:

Late Spring. The grasses in the breeze. There were animals about, but these remained hidden. No creature that still held life would come near the three, so revered was the skill of these interlopers with a hunt. Emery crouched in the grass and motioned the girls near him, his eyes fierce with the pleasure of an expected kill, and the momentous truth of teaching his great skill to the two young soldiers. With a slow but menacing motion, he withdrew his saber and held it out for examination.

"It's sharp," Rebecca said. Vivian's eyes widened as she viewed the instrument of death.

"Let me hold it," she said. Emery shook his head strongly.

"When the coldness of the eve reaches us, and the coming dark takes the field, there will be a moment when night first touches the exact edge of this blade. When that happens, we'll have our kill, and you, little one, will finally be given your saber."

"I'm scared," Rebecca stated.

The mastodon stood near the trees, aroused from his nap and now ripping leaves from the tall foliage with his trunk. Stuffing these into his maw, the beast closed his eyes and let the great teeth render this green into a mash of sustenance, swallowing after much work. A machine did this. A machine of muscle and little thought, great in size and formidable in spirit. The mastodon knew Emery well, for the boy had once killed the beast's mother.

Creeping up on the monster would be no matter of mere stealth. The goliath would have anticipated the old tactic, and so Lieutenant Asher had designed a new approach to the hunt. As the Sun fell into the swayback of the mountains, Emery made this new gambit known.

"Private Vivian Asher, you will secure us our meal, today," he said.

"Me?" Vivian asked.

"A braver six-year old there has never been. You see, my girl, dusk approaches. Its fingers witch down your back even now. Night's skin is the cold of passing. Do you feel it?"

" _I_ do," Rebecca said.

"Yes," Vivian replied.

"Time is near. Our moment sees us and waits. This powerful strike for the Confederacy will be more than subtle victory, but a triumph of humanity over the ancient world, owed in its entirety to the courageous action you will perform."

"What do I do?" Vivian asked.

"Be bait."

"Bait?"

"From the far edge of the field, northwest, you'll come running, waving your small arms and shouting at the devil as he rests."

"I will?"

"Your hoots and screeches are well known; you will startle the monster greatly. Private Rebecca Asher and I will approach at that moment from the rear, quieter, a touch slower so as not to be heard. The monster will hear you, will see you with its ghastly eyes, and it will turn and run for you, to trample your small bones into the Earth."

"No. I don't want to do that," Vivian said.

"But we'll be there, alongside it. I'll stab the throat once, and you, older Private, you'll climb its fur, get atop, and stab the more, down into the spine. Several times should do it."

"Then what?" Rebecca asked.

"Triumph. Of course, we have to do it before it crushes your hooting sister."

The three had reached their positions and were ready to wage the deadly ploy. The crickets chirped in menace. Private Vivian Asher, alone, laid down at the field's edge. She had been counting for what seemed like hours and had finally reached ninety-seven. She breathed shallow and worried over the state of her father and sister, whether they would be there to protect her when it was time. Ninety-eight. The wind had rustled the trees in a ghostly sort of way and caused her heart to stutter. This was a bad place to be a little girl, she suspected, but the hunt was important, and the trophy that would come of it was needed in order to celebrate the Confederacy, to prosper General Mother, and make wonder where only hunger had prior existed. Ninety-nine. The moon had not risen, but allowed itself into being, a white phantasm in a sky still much with light. Over the crest of the horizon shot the form of a dark loon, dithering its wings over the field of death, and as the bird vanished over the trees, Vivian took in a hard breath, squinted her eyes, and gathered up every bit of resolve the world could offer. One-hundred. She jumped to her feet and extended her arms.

The squeaks and waving limbs that startled the mastodon were somewhat meek, but easily perceivable. The beast turned to see her and, as if his very blood surged upward, his front legs stamped out and he began to rise. The mastodon lifted onto his great feet and a sickening roar pressing against the ears of the little one across the field. She gasped and closed her eyes, moving the way she had been told, the way that went against her notion of the proper direction in the given predicament. She moved _toward_ the monster, a staunch testament to the trust she placed in her fellow soldiers; an act of whelming bravery. Her hands now over her eyes, she jogged forward, peeking from between her fingers each few steps.

The mastodon charged and closed much distance. This was happening faster than she had expected. Had Lieutenant Asher suspected this course of events to take so little time? Her eyes opened for a moment. Within the frame of her fingers, she saw a flit of movement beside the mastodon. Her eyes closed again. A few steps. The eyes opened and she saw the cavalry lieutenant, the heroic boy, her father, stabbing his saber into the neck of the beast at a full sprint. The little eyes closed again. Steps. Uncertainty. The eyes opened. With every instance of vision, the mastodon was closer and thus, larger. She watched the lieutenant jump away from the creature as Private Rebecca Asher climbed atop its back, stabbing downward with her own, capable saber. The older sister got to do everything first.

The world spun then as the bait tripped over her own feet and stumbled to the ground. The soil tasted awful. And cold. Private Vivian Asher spit poorly and grimaced, getting to her feet and brushing the dirt from her uniform. The mastodon lay crumpled before her, having stopped but twenty feet in front of her blind stumble to the ground. Private Rebecca Asher stood atop the animal with her blood-coated saber and breathed hard. The lieutenant came up alongside the youngest and lifted her onto his hip, smiling and proud. This made Private Vivian Asher feel quite wonderful.

"We did it, soldier. We've brought down the scourge of the Confederacy."

"Long live the South!" Rebecca exclaimed with rejoice from atop the beast. Lieutenant Asher approached his oldest daughter and addressed upward.

"By the rank and position afforded me by our noble Confederacy and the power of the War Department, I hereby approve your promotion in rank. You are no longer a private, Ms. Asher, but will now function as Acting President of Monroe Worthington Junior High. I congratulate you." Rebecca beamed at this rite of succession, at this grand foray into her own manner of things and the rise in power of the Confederate Army of Asher. General Mother would be pleased.

It was then that the Sun zipped off and the moon chased it in a solemn way. The mastodon's blood changed color. Night descended over the field like a wave over sand. The dark of this shoved the glint from Emery's blade into being and he nodded, setting Vivian down on her own feet again. It was time to pass his position on to his protege, time for young Vivian to become a ranking member of the squad. The little girl marveled at the blood as it dripped from the two sabers. This syrup of life had so little texture, and its green coloring was less vivid by the moment. The blood was no longer warm, but quite cold, and she watched in wonder as the substance pooled beside the animal, dead on the floor and bleeding out its ice cream for them to take at their whim, as much as they liked. Her father ran his fingers over the back of the blade, gathering a smudge of the green, thick blood, lifted them, and had a taste. Vivian did the same. The flavor was new and wondrous, cold and rich. Nutty.

"Pistachio," Emery said, kneeling and extending his little one the symbolic and merited saber. Vivian carefully accepted the saber and admired its curvature, heavy as it was. Her father leaned in close, then, whispering.

"And don't tell anyone, but I'm promoting you, too, little one. You're going from private first class to the official light of my life. Does this sound favorable?"

Vivian provided her father a slight nod and then lifted her cold spoon, having a slight taste, and in that wild moment of recognition between a new sweet and a young mind, she rose into her not-so-slight smile.

CUT TO:

**CBS MORNING SHOW AND TALK HOUR – 1964**

**Tom Nash:** I'd like to talk briefly about something Ted Miller recently said regarding the networks and programming. He said, "The quiz-shows, and Mr. Welk, the mysteries, old west shows, across the board are television at its basest, and that's ABC. Only a short step behind them, and seeming eager to imitate, is NBC." It seems Miller likes CBS a touch better. How would you rate the Big Three, and do you agree with Miller's observation?

**Emery Asher:** Oh, CBS has been paternal. To me, to The Other Side, to my writers. My feelings toward Television City, where we shot most of it after leaving the MGM studio— it's peculiar because they have an almost appreciative quality and the network is very inductive. They've been fair to me and they're good to most writers. You feel a bit welcome, I suppose. CBS has its— CBS is like that more than the other networks, I think.

**Tom Nash:** Can you explain that?

**Emery Asher:** Well, the folks at Columbia Broadcasting hire writers under contract, just like you have a contract for your show, which is-

**Tom Nash:** Sure, right.

**Emery Asher:** -okay, yeah, and this just isn't always the case with the other networks. For writers. They're more of a chain shop that sells a few specific things and they hire whoever makes those things, but as a dramatist, I think CBS is more of- just more of a writer's bazaar. There are all kinds, which is necessary and keeps the blood pumping. And they put on a Playhouse 90, CBS did, and kept it even though it wasn't pulling in much money. Three years they kept it, and they kept going all the way until '61. It was something for television that wasn't governed by the incentive of capitalism. There was money but it wasn't the big tent, just a concession stand near it. Those days are gone, I think. But the contract writers, with creative control, like I've had- we get an opportunity to strike the anvil with CBS. I'm not saying this because this interview is on CBS; I'm saying this out of experience. We can better write what we want to, with more involvement. Range, I mean. We're given more range than we'd be given otherwise. They've built a strong avenue and let us have our harum-scarum when we need it. I don't know much about ABC. I know you've worked with them, but I've only worked with ABC once and it was some time ago.

**Tom Nash:** Right, but as a member of the audience, because I'm sure you watch the shows, as we all do, how would you rate it?

**Emery Asher:** Yes, I watch. But I'm going to have to side with Miller. I'll defer to Ted on this one. Because I watch things with my eye on direction and resources, Tom. As a producer and writer. Seldom as a viewer. I also watch for the story, the narrative, as a writer, and whatever I can gleam of the production, the people... that's more what I see with a show; I see the product and not the network. They're the employer and I'm looking at the work. Really, of the Big Three, in my experience the blade just seems cleanest with CBS. And I disagree with Ted regarding NBC. NBC is fine, overall. I've worked with them and they were fair enough. They took on Hitchcock for the last few years, and I've heard a rumor about Arch Oboler maybe working on a pilot, which would be great. I know they've been setting up a comedy showcase, too, but they still seem to hold up some decent dramas. But liking a network is almost political, at this point. I don't prefer to pick sides; it's bad for the soul and bad for business if you're a writer.

**Tom Nash:** Is television getting better or worse?

**Emery Asher:** Oh, well both. And quite fast. Some of it is very arousing and there's a lot of promise with it. Some potency. But some television can be so middling. It's like spoiled milk being thrown on a screen. I'm confident good things are happening, Tom. I am certain this could, for a lot of reasons, be a serious form of art. It's perceivable that could happen. And I'm with it and I think things can be improved with the veritas that comes from creative control, and in many ways I very much want to be a part of that. To help out. And give my own message, too. The idea, and it's always in conception, never fully matured, and rightfully so, is to aim for real art and see what a fellow can hit.

**Tom Nash:** Four minutes. After a third cancellation, are you bitter about the way CBS has treated you? You seem to say nice things about it, but you have to be a little angry about those cancellations. And always with an Emmy.

**Emery Asher:** No, I'm not bitter. There's no resolve with that conceit, and it has a weight that wrecks anyone with a creative mind. That sort of emotion is poison to anyone who creates, and it ruins the intoxication of writing. We all work hard out here, and I was discouraged by the first two cancellations, yes, because I didn't understand them, and perhaps a little- not bitter, but maybe cynical. As a result, my stories in season three were darker.

**Tom Nash:** Even with the prior Emmys? Surely you must have felt you were doing something right.

**Emery Asher:** I did, but cancellation and awards are two sides of one coin, and you flip that coin to each season. Sometimes you flip it twice and get both. But that's just the weight of change and change is how a group of people flourish and scamper. A television crew. The show had a good heart, I think, and was certainly more careful with itself, and the episodes benefitted from that uncertainty. The axe is a good motivator.

**Tom Nash:** I see, sure. The last cancellation was acceptable?

**Emery Asher:** Well, when we had our head cut off this third time, I do think it was correct to leave it in the basket. We kept it alive before that for good reason, I think, and made very capable use of the borrowed time we'd been given.

**Tom Nash:** Is _The Other Side_ off the air for good?

**Emery Asher:** Yes, it's done.

**Tom Nash:** Because there have been rumors that a 6th season might be in the works, actually on ABC.

**Emery Asher:** Right, I've heard those, too. They're untrue. If another season was in the works, I'm confident I'd be privy to it, being the head writer, host, and producer and all. ABC did offer, but it wouldn't have been the same show and CBS does own the rights. A complete overhaul and change, and it would have likely behaved in a way that grated against the show's real nature. No, Other Side is finished; I think we put on a lot of good episodes and gave the public, and maybe this is vanity, or I like to think pride, but I think we managed to give some truly great moments through that show. I'm very grateful that people have liked it as much as they have, and the rumor of it coming back is so flattering, but all things have an end, Tom. I'll assure everyone that the 5th season was definitely the final season of The Other Side.

**Tom Nash:** What's next? Are you looking to make another anthology?

**Emery Asher:** There are offers but I want to see what I can do with my own ideas, a tête-à-tête with my typewriter and a bit of freelance. I'd like to make another, sure, but it has to be wholly my own. Most of the offers, like the ABC offer, are for things sort of like The Other Side, but just watered down and stilted. I won't do something like that unless I think I could make it better than The Other Side. I don't want to imitate myself, and that's not art's nature, and I don't want this show to devolve into Dracula tales on another network. It's right to die where it is, and if I'm not making something better, there's little point, to me. But yes, I'd welcome another anthology show, a different one, so long as I could remain in speculation and have room to move.

**Tom Nash:** You're not planning on returning to serious writing; you want to stay with the pot-boilers.

**Emery Asher:** No no, not that at all. I think with Other Side, we proved that speculation can be so much more than usual plots and monster mash-ups. A serious story can still be entertaining, Tom, and if something is fun or intriguing, in no way is that story simply a potboiler by that mood. That's something I think we've proven with The Other Side. It was certainly fun, but we were adult about it, and the episodes were of a good quality. We treated each episode like a film. The were dramas. You've seen the show.

**Tom Nash:** Of course, but what I mean is that you want to stick to entertaining. To stories that convey what you want through layman sensibilities.

**Emery Asher:** I don't believe otherworldly tales are exclusively the domain of the layman, Tom. There is no real consensus that states time travel in a story instantly relegates that story as having no merit. We have an attitude, and it's a very human attitude but damaging, that if something is fun or enjoyable, it's frivolous or bad for us. So, yes and no. I want to write what's meaningful to me, and I do enjoy dressing it up in these wonderful elements of fantasy. And you like it, as well, or I wouldn't be here for your talk hour.

**Tom Nash:** I do like them.

**Emery Asher:** Okay, but this in no way means that's all I can do or that the stories are any less for it. They're not pot-boilers and I dislike that way of thinking. Again, these are dramas with elements of speculation. They're not simply one or the other.

**Tom Nash:** But surely you know that these are quite different than your earlier work, which had a more literary scope. Those first stories, for which you received awards, I might add, they had a sense of importance, didn't they? And for now-

**Emery Asher:** Yes, okay.

**Tom Nash:** -for now, would you say that you would rather write the entertaining thing, instead of the important thing?

**Emery Asher:** No. They are the same entitity for me. Entertaining can be plenty important. I think we're sliding into semantics. And the work I did with The Other Side won awards, too. I consider it all the same work, the same awards, not different things in opposition, Tom. A person can find importance in anything. It's up to the viewer, really. I'm not giving up on writing well. Certainly not. I'm just fond of a particular sort of vehicle. They'll tell you that writing for television is low, and they said that writing for the motion pictures was low, and before that, they told you that writing novels was low, and there were the plays and the songs, and before that, anything outside of latin verse was said to be low. None of that is actual, Tom. Those are writers throughout history shouting at their replacements, Tom. It's happening now, too, and it will never end. I love the written art. There is nothing low about any of it.

**Tom Nash:** If not the medium, would you say that certain artists can be considered low?

**Emery Asher:** Oh, of course. There are varying levels of skill involved. There are bad writers just as there are good writers, but not by station or genre or format. Good and bad is a question of skill and lack of skill. The world of scriptwriting shouldn't be held accountable for someone's bad script. That writer should, but not the medium.

**Tom Nash:** Two minutes. Now, you've been very outspoken in the past about sponsorship problems and network trouble, and Gerald Moe once called you "the only man in television with enough fingers to point at absolutely everyone". What I want-

**Emery Asher:** Okay, sure.

**Tom Nash:** -what I want to ask you is- and many people have noticed a less outspoken Asher since _The Other Side_ first went on the air. Fewer harangues. Less complaint. But what I want to ask you is: Do you think you've conformed in the last few years?

**Emery Asher:** I have plenty of ammunition, even a little for Gerald Moe, but I'm tired of the battle. It's too overwhelming trying to fight with networks, with sponsors, and I'm tired of it. Those skirmishes really get you nowhere. I'm weary of campaigning for things I need, only to end up having to settle for much less. It's an endless series of compromises, and with more of it on my end than theirs. It's like asking dad for a nickel when you were twelve-years old, and he says he'll give you two pennies, instead, and only if you do the following seven new chores, and you think, "no, that's unfair, that's worth a quarter." But he's your dad; you have to do what he says. This is right at the heart of what it means to be a television writer, if that writer wants to do anything at all controversial or timely.

**Tom Nash:** Well, when I was twelve, it would have been a penny and not a nickel, but-

Emery Asher: Right, sure.

**Tom Nash:** Well, let me ask you this: Why continue in the medium? Is it for that nickel?

**Emery Asher:** Oh, for the same reason you do, Tom. The nickel is nice, sure, but we fit here. We fit well. Some writers have left. I know Gore Vidal has said his goodbyes to the small screen, I think. But the shape of our souls might be different. Television fits all sorts. And also because I think there can be truly mature, entertaining, serious drama, writing that reaches for real, human meaning, without being mucked by marketing. There can be controversy and real meaning on the home screen, but only if the networks think that's what the public wants. My job is to let them taste as much of that as I can sneak through. It's not a great world, television, and I don't mean to say that it's a pit of snakes or an unfair enterprise, or that it will ever become some sort of peak for literature, I just think it's untapped and hasn't really begun to do what I'm certain it can.

**Tom Nash:** Do you seek controversy?

**Emery Asher:** Well, it's a little sinister to me that social evils aren't permitted to be shown in a dramatic light on television. Human beings are controversial. We are. Our themes are like that, too, and buried deep in our culture. We're incredibly timely, and our entertainment could be, too. Should be, sometimes. Keeping these elements out of our drama is like keeping a preacher away from a pulpit, or a car from moving down some nice, newer road. This is what's happening, I think, and it'll be up to future writers to flesh that out, if it's possible. For now, I want to write more and keep doing new things, and continue to work with television in the mode that I can.

**Tom Nash:** Thirty seconds. I want to get to this briefly: You're about to embark on a world lecture tour across numerous countries. Is this a short stint for you, or something you plan on doing more of in the future?

**Emery Asher:** I've never really done anything like it before, but if it goes well, I might be interested in doing so more often. If I can help inform new writers a bit from my experiences, I'd be glad to. The tour starts off in Boston on the 24th of this month.

**Tom Nash:** And good luck. Emery Asher, thank you for being here this morning.

**Emery Asher:** Sure, my pleasure, Tom.

**Chapter Thirty**

FADE IN:

EXT. HONG KONG, DOWNTOWN - EVENING

A large and busy city of both eastern and western influence.

We see large structures, vehicles moving through intersections, and people moving about in large numbers, the Sun low on the horizon. A slow pan towards one area of town, then we zoom towards a smaller building. As we draw close, over rooftops and traffic, we focus in on the building. It is a hotel. We can see a plane taking off in the not-to-distant background.

CUT TO:

The stark prints of a thriving organism about all others. Sweet, gut smell of human saturation, odor of mingling characters and fabrics, alloys, movements. Commerce. Emery's voice was hoarse and his eyes and mind bleary from incessant travel, but he was near the end of his circuit, and the European leg of his tour had been sated on the small amount of substance he could offer it. Europe was quick to offer him substance, as well, and in particular, one containing alcohol.

In Hong Kong, his final stop of the tour, he found that the element of every tree juxtaposed the high-rise vest of the city, and between these seemingly opposing forces, the surge of millions were moving about and trying to exist in the manner they sought. The culture was not as foreign as he had surmised it would be, but the structure was alien to him. The very air seemed to have been exhaled from a busy sort of being, and in no place was there such wondrous hurry than that to be found in Hong Kong.

The vastness of the great city was thickening and extensive, broaching upon its own foundation with new ideas. There was a clash of sensibilities and tradition here, British clouds that had been given room to float in the panoptic, Chinese sky. It was if a crayon of civilization had melted over the Earth, coloring it in varying degrees of modernity, and brought all souls near it to converge on a watering hole's natural, tank limits.

Contrary to his notion that he would be upset, he had enjoyed Germany. His stop in France had been somewhat rejuvenating, though he had come down with a flu in London. Through all the stops and all the lectures, he still found a good time in traveling about with those who had offered him the engagements. In none of these places had he felt something he might believe was new. Europe was saturated in the reverberations of history, and unlike the United States, could not escape it.

There was beauty in tradition and heritage to witness in his travels, but these modes were somewhat alien to him. They were fascinating, but he did not possess the natural tether to these cultural aspects. The United States were somewhat young, and he was unaccustomed to the presence of a millennium in one's culture. Hong Kong was decidedly different, however. There was tradition, yes, and much of it, but this coexisted with the mighty swath of wanting the new, of knowing the future in some way. As Emery walked about the area near his hotel, it almost felt as if Hong Kong would try to design the future, itself, for everyone who wanted in on the gambit. It was a more west than the east, and more east than the west.

From the trip's outset, he had been predisposed to quelling frustrations, a building sense of confrontation between himself and time, which changed with each act of relocation. The hiving madness of this was difficult to manage. He found himself operating biologically, relying more on the Sun's position than his watch, in order to gauge a day's state. He had grown weary of adjusting his watch, and could never be certain he had it just right. Entering various time zones had played with his senses in a rude way. At times, he would discover that his watch was off by more than an hour, despite that he was cautious to set it with each new time zone he entered.

His celebrity overseas was greater, he discovered, but quieter, and more street-oriented. There were plenty of European producers at the lectures, as the American fish tended not to swim so far from their own reef, but Emery was delighted to find an almost unwieldy assemblage of fans and fellow writers. He felt admired, and wanted, which was as if bourbon to him. It would be strange to return to Los Angeles, to be in a place where his credentials were in a diminished state. He was more popular in America, but less _liked_. This made him a will among many others, whereas throughout Europe, he had gained that small spark of notoriety that caused him to feel, at least for an hour, here and there, as if he had done more than win Emmys.

Europe, and now Asia, seemed to enjoy his work more than his awards, and this carried the sensation of certain forgiveness, of tolerability from the world, something Emery was haggardly thankful to receive. America focused on the name and treated his work as a product. Europe, and especially Asia, focused on the reason for the name, and thought of his work as exactly that: His work. It was refreshing and accommodated his ego in a useful and sating way.

The circuit seemed to be one long motion of escaping from each narrow place, only to wind up in another. He existed between these walls of force, amidst the hours of day and night and his rush in getting from one lecture to the next. There were the relieving calls from his soul's base, however, and these came to him from his true life and home, from his foundation. Beth seemed to have grown accustomed to his lecture circuit, was more at ease with it than she had been at the beginning. The first two weeks had been the rough ones, and he looked forward to their conversations with much zeal.

The lectures ended in a brief question and answer setup, which gave him time to be more legitimate and even affect a bit of charm, if his mood agreed. The questions, usually from college students and minor members of various British and German television crews, focused on the industry itself, where it was headed and where it had been, but there would invariably come the time when someone would ask Emery the question he had come to dread: _What's next for Emery Asher?_ He had devised many lines of thought on this matter, in order to answer these questioners somewhat, but there was little in his various responses that felt true to him. In answering what was next for him, he felt to be a pitchman again, selling a product that was only in the basest sense of any use. He did not know what was next. There could be more trouble with Pacific. He might perform more scrambling to get his scripts purchased and, with any luck, produced and shot (while needing even more luck and finagling to get that thing aired).

Over the telephone, Emery gave his words a tone that masked his gloominess. He treated the excellent sound of her voice to his warmer thoughts, but was business-faced in keeping back his trouble: He missed her terribly and had nearly cancelled the tour but two weeks back. Surviving this potential catastrophe, and managing to stave off the self-sullying his name and respect as a reliable speaker would have faced, he was now back on track. Hong Kong would have the biggest pay-out of his lecture tour, eclipsing even the amount he had made in London. He was nearly finished. Hong Kong was two lectures over two nights, and one of them had already been given.

Once he returned home, when the tour was done, he would better describe how awful it was to be away from his family. He did not want to inspire any sadness in her while he was away, or let fester any more shame in himself over being gone for so long. By its nature, the tour was providing his family in the means it required, but it dwelled in a realm of thought that made him question his more significant roles of father and husband.

She relayed business to him in a curt way, being uninterested in fostering further talk of work while he was away on said work, but Emery needed to know what had come in the mail and when. He needed to know who was calling and why. Beth kept him abreast of his career back home and, after this information had made it through the awkward electrical delay between continents, the thousands of miles of wiring into his ear, when it was done, she would relax and become her usual self. He had never been much for hugging, but there was the matter of that popular phrase about absence and what it does to the heart, and his thoughts continually returned to hugs, kissing, and simply being in the same room with his wife, even if they were only sitting on the couch and watching television.

"Your producer called and so did your friend, Ted," she updated.

"My producer?"

"That Mr. Dozier."

"Oh, oh. Bernie. He's my ex-producer," Emery said, more to himself.

"Right. Him. He wants you to call him back."

"Did you mention I'm busy over on the other side of the planet right now?"

"Yes, he knows about it. But he said you should call him right away."

"That sounds urgent. Did he say what it was about?"

"No. Is it maybe _The Other Side_ is going back on?"

What an overwhelming nightmare that would be. After fighting relentlessly to stay on the air, season after season, his time in the network gulag of _The Other Side_ was done. He now saw that having it cancelled for good was not the punishment or bad luck he had at first attributed the problem, but more of an early release for good behavior. Only a few weeks after the cancellation, he had begun to see just how much the show had absorbed him, and sadly, his family. That force had not been one of inconvenience, as he had surmised it to be, but was proving to have been more destructive in scope. Now that he had performed his own mental funeral for the show, having it return would be as maudlin and horrific as Sol Jamison returning, having clawed his way out of the coffin, undead and relegated to walking the Earth once more, an abomination that once was loved.

"Dear lord, it better stay in the dirt. I'd cancel that show myself, anymore. I'm done with it."

"Well, do you want the number?"

"Sure, give it to me. I'll call him later tonight, I suppose. Around... damn it, maybe eight p.m.? It'll be morning where you are then, right?"

"Oh, I don't know. Let's see, fourteen hours-"

"Thirteen, I think."

"Are you sure?"

"I think so, yes. In Honk Kong, it's thirteen hours."

"And we're ahead, right?"

"Uh, I'm ahead of you."

"Right so, thirteen behind you, if you're at eight..."

"Okay, it'll be seven a.m., your time. Got it. That's fine."

"Seven... on which day?"

"I think the same day, in this case. Seven your time is eleven my time. Same date. You said someone else called?"

"Hmm? Oh, Calvin called."

"Ah, how is Calvin? He settle down yet?"

"He seemed fine. He wanted to tell you that Larry is sick. I tried calling Helen but no one has been answering."

"Oh, that. I heard about it last month. If it's still going on, it must not be the flu."

"He sounded concerned. He said it's mental."

"Larry having a nervous breakdown? That doesn't seem plausible. I'll visit him when I get back."

"We should have another dinner party."

"That's a good idea. Especially if he's getting out of sorts. Maybe he hasn't found work yet. I know the feeling. Poor Larry. And Helen. Let's make sure we do that. We'll have them over." Emery removed his shoes as they spoke and, when done, leaned back in the uncomfortable hotel chair, his room a swirl of the unfamiliar, and yet achingly usual.

"Say, is Rebecca there?" he asked then.

"In the kitchen. You want me to put her on?"

For Rebecca and Vivian, he offered adventuresome but quick tales of things he had encountered along the way. The telephone calls overseas were going to stack up a great amount of debt if he let himself talk as much as his fondness for the girls urged him. Keeping within a timed frame, understanding the verbal length of minutes and seconds, while telling a story was, however, one of the few things he had truly mastered over the years. He even found himself subconsciously separating his adventures into acts.

Rebecca told him about how much she disliked being her junior high school's president, and that she was tired of it, wanting only for the school year to end. The father, in this instance, was able to discuss her dilemma in somewhat simple terms. He remembered being in the same position when he was a child, and he remembered it quite well. Holding the school presicency had been somewhat miserable, most days, but these would almost always be punctuated in instances of great fun and an eager sort of responsibility. She would see, soon enough. She just needed to give it time, which, given her age, was asking much. The matter of being the first female school president in the history of her school was noteworthy, and he wanted his daughter to cherish that feat. The time zone manipulation between Hong Kong and Los Angeles was stark and so clear when compared to the difference in time's passage between prepubescence and adulthood. Entirely different zones. School was nearly out for the year, and he knew Rebecca would hang in there just fine.

Vivian had gotten into a bit of trouble with a boy at school. It seems they had been caught in the act of a fistfight in the gymnasium. Beth had handled the dean well enough, and the problem was now somewhat moot, but Emery did feel the need to address it with his daughter. Fighting was out. No good to anyone, even if it was but a slap between children. These things needed to be taken up early, approached and carefully instilled, or a parent might have a devil of a time trying to lecture the lesson later. He had not kept on Rebecca about her studies and grades, and this had resulted in summer school between her fifth and sixth grades. She had been quite upset by this, but now things were going well, better than merely being "on-track". Her grades were acceptable, her eighth grade habits in study were no longer lagging behind the other students, and she was the school president, no less. Granted, this had been won more by popularity, rather than grades, but that, in itself, was something from which she would come to learn much. Emery certainly had, though much later in life. Popularity could make you a holder of gold statues, or an utterly collapsed wreck of a soul.

When the girls were finished talking, the telephone was given back to their mother. Emery mentioned all of the things that a telephone call over such a distance demanded: Assurance of safe return, affectations of love, and those quieter, sighed utterances of missing someone. They were the only way to end these particular scripts, and the characters taking part in the story accepted them as truth.

"Good night, honey," Beth said, tired in both voice and things to talk about.

"Sleep well. I'm on my way to lunch."

"Enjoy."

FADE OUT

Pacific Pictures presents... On Order of the President, a new film starring Molly Pearce as war reporter Joan Lacey, and James Vance as Captain Andrew Tilson. As the Second World War spirals into the Pacific, American ground troops are aided by a new team of enhanced soldiers, a squad of supermen who have harnessed the power of the atom. They are silent, fast, strong, and ready to change the tide of the war. Led by Captain Andrew Tilson, these super soldiers aim at nothing short of complete victory in the war. But there is a saboteur in the unit, a traitor that may, himself be a superman. As war rages in the Pacific, so does the deadly game of sabotage and double-spies set into motion On Order of the President.

CUT TO:

A population of three million people, with over half of them under the age of thirty. The Sun was a child in the sky. While the rain was intermittent, this was heavy when it came, which bothered the child in the sky. The city was its playmate. Both were young. The child threw tantrums at times and evaporated the rain, causing an ugly humidity only truly appreciated by those reptiles and insects populous to the region, as well as those lifeforms based in green and wood. According to Mr. Hsiung, his liaison for the weekend, the local government, a curious hodge-podge of eastern and western policy, were building a massive tunnel through the mountains from Sha Tin to the New Territories, a feat of engineering that rivaled any of which Emery had knowledge. In a manner akin to the citizenry of the United States, but more pronounced, the people of Hong Kong were free to worship in the religion of their choice. They seemed to have chosen, with the resources and modernity available, to worship industry. There were so many people and Emery was but one of them.

He hailed a cab to the university and, after paying his fare, walked briskly toward the lecture hall. He now had a small, makeshift map of the university and surrounding neighborhood, due to his having had much trouble the night previous in finding his way around. The stars, when they came, were blurred by the exhaust of industry, but still visible. The sky was carved up by intermittent volleys of planes, an endless run of them taking off and landing in rapid succession. Kai Tak Airport, by which he had arrived and would soon leave Hong Kong, was an incredibly busy enterprise. The night watched the city and tall buildings, the harbor and planes, and pressed all of it forward, shawling Hong Kong in twilight, the moon hovering over a cosmopolitan society wedged against the sea and nestled into the Earth as with a trowel.

The fear was digressive and manageable, usually subdued within moments after it erupted: A loud, angry shout in Chinese from a street-side, from a restaurant, or while strolling across the campus. He had no reason to trouble over the language of another, but to his western ears, trained in English (and of the age they were mostly closed off to the intricacies of other languages), Chinese had some of the sound of Japanese. Both countries protested this synopsis much. Emery was guilty of not knowing the difference in sound, but he could not adjust himself. To an easterner with little experience in English or German, those two sister languages might sound the same, as well. The problem was the spark of memory that encountering a louder Asian tongue caused him.

When Emery heard this language shouted near, his mind spun on a pivot that dipped him into the gulches of Leyte. He heard the enemy soldiers shouting to one another, and he panicked. The nightmares were present in Hong Kong, like they had been in Germany, and even Britain. As awful as they were, having never left him since their material was first gathered, he had accustomed to the occasional horror story in his sleep, enough that these no longer posed disorder in the following day. He would wake in a start, breathe, and then spend a few minutes gathering his character before pushing on with the morning. They were only nightmares now, not haunts, simply dreams that deserved to be forgotten as fast and unexpected as they came. The shouts in Hong Kong, however... there were moments in which these could wake his nerves with the force of a siren.

Emery shook loose his nervous tackle and set it aside, continued into the lecture hall and was promptly given room to prepare. Mr. Hsiung was not present for some reason, but the benefactors were kind, asking him about lighting and some elements of time, offering him food and drink, whatever he needed. They were pleased when he proved quite rudimentary in setting up: So long as the microphone was active, he needed only to walk out before the audience and start talking, as he had practiced and rehearsed his material much over the course of the tour.

The lecture went as planned, and because it was the last of his tour, he chose to show more mirth than the weariness he had exhibited the night before. He chose to play a bit more. Knowing this was his last engagement before returning to his actual life gave him a fusillade of subjects that he found himself able to discuss, back and forth between his various conceits quickly. He had much energy and his mind was being generous with him. He spoke with clarity but let himself ride tangents more than usual, wanting to take advantage of his sudden creativity before the fleet nature of this unpredictable artifact left his pocket.

The questions at the end were common ones, and the writers were every bit as present as in previous countries. Hong Kong was working on its own cinema, and there were plentiful ideas in its writers. In time, the questions and comments made the expected swivel from television and Hong Kong to television and Emery. The usual question surfaced near the end, and Emery announced that he was working on numerous scripts, that 'what was next for Emery Asher' was his family, and that he would be working on some side projects until he made a choice on a larger one. Saying so inferred there were such things being offered, however. This was somewhat of a lie. There was yet no major promise of work, not since declining the few offers that had come in at the start. There was still time for personal choice, but not for long. Soon, Darwin's mode would take over and he would adapt or perish. There would be no choice but to take what came.

After the questions, Emery devised a few of his own. Personal questions regarding his career. He ran these through his mind, trying to internally lecture on them while sitting in the cab, being driven back to his hotel.

### ***

After glancing at the sequence of numbers he had earlier written down, Emery reached for the room's telephone. He gave the sequence to the desk clerk and then waited. After some time, the sound of connection occurred, and the odd, warbling tone of having reached another phone stuttered against his eardrum. He rubbed his eyes, blinking and exhaling, still awake, still upright, but only so because he was leaning on the mental wall of business. Exhaustion, a rather worthy nemesis, had been working on taking down this particular wall, and was laboring with expedience. He did not expect to feel warm upon hearing the voice. There were surprises everywhere, it seemed. Some from Los Angeles that were unearthed half the world away.

"Hello?" the voice muttered, not seeming to be fully awake. Emery lowered his voice to a gruff tone.

"Good morning, Lord Dozier. It is time to get up and experience the excellence of being."

"What in- who the hell is this?"

"This is your conscience, Lord Dozier, and I'm calling to tell you I quit."

"You're real fuzzy; I can barely hear you. This Asher?"

"The same," he said in his normal voice.

"Okay, good," Dozier said before erupting into a fit of noise that seemed one part hack to two parts clearing of the throat, "oh... god what time is it?"

"I think it's about seven-"

"Christ, Emery, it's five in the damn morning."

"Uh, it may be, then. Sorry. My math must have been off."

"Hold on. _It's Emery Asher. Go back to sleep. No, he didn't know. He's in Hong Kong and didn't know the time difference right. Yeah, sorry; I'll be quiet. Go back to your bed._ All right, I'm here. Listen, I'm glad you called, Em. It's good to hear from you. How the hell is China, anyway? I've never been to a red country before."

"Well, it's Hong Kong, which is run by the British. It's in China, yes, but the city itself isn't communist. It's a real melting pot. Inspiring. Very industrious but quite pretty, too. The air tastes like enterprise out here."

"Wouldn't want to live there though, huh?"

"Well, maybe if it weren't for the rain. Tonight was a prolonged, warm shower."

"It's weird to hear you say 'tonight' in the past tense."

"It's stranger for me, because I know that outside your house right now is a beautiful, bright, sunny morning trying to come up, and that promises to be ideally warm. I'd wager twenty on it."

"You'd win that wager if I took it." The oddity of being pals with Bernie Dozier began to strike Emery as being an unnecessary silliness. He would prefer to talk about whatever business Dozier had professed as urgent.

"You don't say."

"I do say. How's the food over there?"

"Best food I've ever eaten," Emery responded, getting more tired by the second.

"The lecture circuit workin' out?"

"Yeah, it's good, but busy. Uh, as a result, I'm somewhat short on time, Bernie. What can I do for you?"

"No problem. Listen, I just took over Fairway Productions. You remember them?"

"No, I don't recall."

"It's a fledgling company that couldn't hold water, was run by a fat-head named Jack Molson. You'll remember him."

"Oh, I remember that prick. He's the son of a bitch I popped in the mouth outside Sol's funeral."

"Yeah, that's him. Well, he's out, couldn't do anything without screwing it up. But they were fishing around and I took a chance, and well, the job's mine. In fact, I can say the whole damn company is mine. I'm the big man, for now, so long as I can keep it on oxygen. They're giving me a complete run of things, minus some changes to the founding staff I'm not allowed to make. Most of 'em are fine, though. Bottom line, I run this thing for 'em, and we all get paid if I can keep it from goin' under. They mostly gave it to me because of _The Other Side_."

"Congratulations, Bernie. It sounds like you've found a place for yourself. That's a job."

"Oh, it's a job, all right. I haven't stopped moving in nearly a month. This call is the most relaxing thing to happen to me in weeks."

"I see."

It was good to hear things were working out for Bernie. Despite his fallbacks as a producer, Dozier was the sort of man that learned his lessons quick, and Emery doubted the man would make the same mistakes again. He knew more about the tooth and nail now, when to go it alone, when to involve others, and what network weather called for which sort of clothes. A producer never stopped learning lessons, Emery supposed.

"We've got a few things lined up, but I want a show, is the thing. The little stuff is fine, but I want a serial. One big one," the producer said.

"From me," Emery replied, smiling.

"Sorry, I can't hear you. Can you hear me?"

"Yes. You want a show from me, I said."

"That's it. You. And I know the story, too."

"Oh? All right, you snake. Out with it. What are you up to?"

"Remember after the first season got shut down, you wrote a couple of pilots and ran 'em by me?"

"All too well."

"There was one I read that I loved, and I've got it in my briefcase as we speak."

" _The Deserter,_ " Emery said.

"That's the script! How'd you know it was that one?"

"I'm a writer. When someone compliments a piece I wrote, it rattles in my head for eternity."

"Well, good. Anyway, I love it. I've been re-reading this thing, and the way you put it all together fits what I envision for Fairway perfectly. Matches the times even more now than it would have four years ago."

"Well, thank you. I'll give it-"

"For a cowboy thing."

"-some... right, for a western. I can give it some revision when I get back. But yes, I'm in, Bernie."

Returning home was now more than the stretched rubber band of his tour being snapped back into its original shape, more than finally drawing his family into his arms and simply feeling the days of this particular life. This was now a pivot point to the next stage of his career, if Dozier could be trusted to oversee this project in the manner Emery thought he could. Even with the incessant cancellations for _The Other Side_ , Dozier had managed to keep the coals stoked enough for Emery to get the show back on the air on two separate occasions. That was a bit unheard of in network history. Between the two of them, certain problems could be overcome with ease, especially now that the two of them had learned the hundreds of small lessons the previous show had taught them, often harshly.

"You're in? Just like that?"

"Well, I'm not 'out'. Yet."

"Good enough for me. We'll talk out the details and contracts when you're back in the states, Em. I just needed to know if I should start pushing this thing. A western is a hard sell anymore, but not the way you wrote this one. It's a thinking man's western. It's... eh, it's surreal and has a lot of heart. Western fans would love it, right? And _Other Side_ fans would love it, too. And most importantly, _I_ love it."

"Okay, we're throwing around a lot of love. I get it. Start pushing. Do what you do. I'm fond of the idea, for now. There _have_ been a couple of changes to the script since that draft I gave you, what with four years having passed. It's been a year since I last went over it, but I figure he didn't desert the union side now, I've made him a southern confederate deserter. They were harsher on their men. And the soldiers had to work with worse gear, less equipment. That's why he's so good with a rifle and why he's a bit battle-torn. Deplores violence. A moral man, but an able protector that can take action if he's pushed to it, you see? A capable guy stuck in his own sort of tragedy."

"That's the Emery Asher I know. Work it in."

"And I have a better opening story, too. For a pilot. We start with a town dying of thirst because someone has been throwing dead animals down into the well. It's sabotage, with the intent on poisoning the town. Anyway, the deserter does everything he can to get these people water from far off towns, riding like crazy with some young boys from the town, all of them hurrying to get more and more water back before more people die. And they're dying, all right. And the water is heavy so they can't carry much of it at a time. It's desperation. That would show his good nature, his need to help people that are bad off, or stuck with something they don't deserve; sets the show off on the note that he isn't a coward, or a bad person, he's alone in the world. He's troubled, and he escaped the war to avoid being hung by his own for the treason he didn't commit. He's innocent and trying to be a good man."

"Who's the bad guy poisoning the well?"

"Turns out it's the preacher. A real Old Testament sort. Hallucinating from the heat and dehydration. Thinks he's purifying the town. In the end, our guy, with half the town on his side, tries to keep the other half from killing the preacher, but it does no good. There's a tragic hanging and everyone is real quiet. Our guy leaves and drifts onward."

"Huh. Well, I get what you're saying, but the Confederates did lose, Em. That part doesn't make much sense to me. If you want to make him the South, okay, but I think people would identify more with the Union side, because it's why we're all here."

"No, no, that's the thing. His side lost right after he deserted it. And even though the war is over, because he deserted, he has no one, and nowhere to go. The North doesn't want him because he was a Confederate, and the South doesn't want him because of his desertion and treason. The times are slowly changing but he can't change himself. He's unwanted and alone. He's lost. Nothing left for him but the cruel and wayward west."

"All right, I'm sure it'll make more sense to me when you show me the script. Get it to me when you get back."

"Consider it done."

"Oh ho, it's settled. You and me. We're makin' a show, Asher."

"Wait, before we go any further, or make any moves on this, there are a few things I need to make absolutely clear; my requirements to do this."

"You got demands already? All right, let's hear 'em."

"I'll want the same deal I had when starting _The Other Side_. That's straight and simple. It's what I have to have. We produce together, and it's the same deal, but with more writers. I think five total, including me. I don't want to negotiate on that. And I have to keep creative control and, for the love of god, I want a no-videotape clause." This was stone. If Emery wasn't granted these particular resolutions, he would not take part. This moment was a tense one, because a potential future hinged upon it.

"That's all fine with me," Dozier said after a moment of thought. Emery's blood warmed, more awake than it had been in months. Sleep would be out after this. He was going out for a drink. The world was on track again, for now. The possibility of a "large project" had come.

"Really? Then that's perfect," Emery said, feeling this to be the most apt term in describing his situation.

"The setup works, Em. It worked before, it'll work again. Hell, _I_ don't want creative control; what would I do with it? I think five writers is a few too many, but we can hash that out once we get the pilot made. I'm open to the idea if we discover it's necessary. And screw videotape; I definitely get it. Look, uh, the money won't be as good, though. We both know that, right?"

"I understand. We'll work out money later. My largest concern is the workload; I don't want to wear myself out like I did on _The Other Side_."

"Great, we'll come up with a plan, then. There's no way I'm going back to sleep after this, so I'm gonna get dressed and put on some coffee. Enjoy Hong Kong. And hey, say nice things about me in your lectures."

"Oh, I'm done. Finished the last of them only two hours ago. But I did have a few nice things to say about you over the course of a lecture."

"Yeah?"

"Well, in the second half. I had to make up for the things I said about you in the first half."

**Chapter Thirty-One**

FADE IN:

EXT. The boundaries of EMERY'S dreams - dawn

and at times

INT. Production sound-stage for 'The Deserter' - dusk

A set for a dusty, desert-like scene. There is a painted backdrop indicating the rock structures and hills of the American southwest. The set is idle. No one is present but several lights are on. A stationary piece of tumbleweed sits at the stage's edge. In the set's center is a television, sitting in the caked sand.

ZOOM TO:

The television screen. We see the television activate, and we find ourselves watching the black come to life. The set flickers and, after a beat, a program begins. It's 'The Deserter', third episode, and as the introduction begins, we see that we are currently on the same set for the scene we're watching on screen. A set within a set. We see LIEUTENANT MERRILL on the screen, in western wear, sitting on his horse. Tumbleweed bounces past him at the same moment it bounces past us on set.

The channel is altered here, however, and the show cuts off. We are now treated to a different show. We see a montage of a victorious EMERY ASHER parading through the set and rewriting people's faces. We see him sweating and smoking and drinking like a machine. The cast and crew of 'The Deserter' mill about a busy set as EMERY hops around between them, inflicting his will on others. We see LLOYD VERNE as THE DESERTER, HENRY MERRILL. VERNE is talking with EMERY, aggravated. EMERY holds an Emmy in one hand and a tape recorder in his other. A lasso hangs at his waist.

EMERY:

(into tape recorder)

This is a note to uh, go ahead and remove one of the gaffers. Tall guy. You know who. Find out his name, first. I don't know him any, but he's drunk again and it's pissing me off.

CUT TO:

EMERY swilling bourbon from a bottle and cramming lit cigarettes into his mouth while in a makeshift writer's room. More of a shed, really. From here, we pan around to a stage. A TALL MAN stands on it, talking with DOZIER. We see the TALL MAN walk away dejected, having been fired. Nearby Teamsters point and laugh at the terminated man.

CUT TO:

EMERY standing before a director, his hands on the director's face. EMERY is rearranging the man's features, moving the nose up and lips down, broadening the cheeks, giving the director the appearance of a pig. Two insect people stand in the background gauging this behavior and nodding to one another. We see EMERY then walk over toward a receptionist, just off set. She slowly walks behind a partition while unbuttoning her shirt. EMERY looks about and then follows. He has a dog's tail extruding from the back of his pants and the tail begins to wag.

CUT TO:

LLOYD VERNE, playing Henry Merrill, The Deserter, strutting across a set with a rifle in his hands. Other actors approach and a scene begins. We pan away from this scene to see EMERY standing beside the pig director, laughing and smoking and coughing and slapping his knees. We pan back to the scene with the actors. They're pointing into the distance, into the old west, which resembles New Mexico and is painted on a back canvas. Over this suddenly drops a large banner with the headline: Asher Strikes Gold with New Western.

FADE BLACK

In the black, we begin to hear quiet gunfire, automatic weapons, rainfall. This gains in volume over about ten seconds. We hear orders being shouted in English and the occasional, solitary shout in Japanese. Then we hear Susa's soft voice.

SUSA:

A letter is such a terrible way to learn about your father's passing, but it's the only way I can reach you. I'm so sorry, Emery.

There is a brief eruption of gunfire, followed by a bugle working the reveille, which cuts out abruptly several seconds in.

FADE IN:

EXT. West Binghamton Cemetery, 1944 - DAY

There is no sound. We see EMERY standing before the wooden coffin at the tail end of a funeral, dressed in his formal military uniform. His hat is cocked and so is his mind. We see him lift a cigarette and take a long inhale, staring coldly at the wooden coffin (viewing open) that contains his father, Henry. The lid is closed and the coffin begins to slowly descend into the Earth. His mother, SUSA steps forward and hops onto the coffin as it lowers. We see her disappear beneath the rim of the gravesite. With a sigh, EMERY bends down and picks up a shovel. Beside him steps a JAPANESE SOLDIER, also holding a shovel. The two men glance at one another and begin shoveling dirt into the hole.

CUT TO:

Emery's commercial for Chaste Cigarettes, a thirty second spot of pure advertisement. We have sound now. Emery's eyebrows enunciate his meaning as he speaks, his voice calm and practiced, his suit pressed and his hair slicked back clean. He smokes and speaks and assures us that the matters of rich flavor and pleasing sensation are now at our disposal. There's a jingle, but this, like the earlier reveille, cuts out sharply after several seconds.

FADE BLACK

Los Angeles. The sun above. The work below. Television. Sets and people of the industry. The orchestration of a show's production was again the gruel of his days. Emery had thrown himself headlong into _The Deserter_ , his feelers wavering and picking up any feed that might lodge itself near enough for him to detect it. Before the first episode, when the pilot had been shot and was about to be aired, critics had panned the announcement. They felt the last thing television needed was yet another western, a genre already threadbare and devoid of new ideas. It was a child buying cologne for his dad on Christmas. Something dull and played out, intrinsically, but forgiven because this was a child. Emery was not so innocent and the critics had devastating mouths full of disdain for the idea. Then the pilot aired and most changed their tune.

This pilot was a strong example of what Emery was going for, which was only a western in the visual sense. Henry Merrill was a good character, with intricacies and a complex nature that Emery could spend years uncovering in the serial format. The reviews were very promising, and no one had expected what Emery was bringing to the genre, which was a gallimaufry of surreal emotional feedback stirred with heart. And a rifle. The stories were genuine and far-fetched at the same instant. There was a moral involved, and a magnificent back story full of detail, but Merrill, as a character, was quiet and obscured, Deciphering him, as well as the moral of his existence in the west, would take far more than the viewing of a single episode.

Emery had married Beth a second time after returning from Hong Kong, which described his sentiment quite well. The children were able to attend this service, as did several friends and cohorts, including Calvin, though Emery was sad to note Larry had not been able to make it. Beth's aunt attended, though more due to her happening to be on a visit during the wedding. Emery wrote vows, but these were not for the Emmy. Beth knew him more than anyone else could, and no amount of literature would please her coming from Emery. Flowers given by a florist bore less heart than flowers from a plumber. What he wrote was simple, honest, and all about her. This also happened to be the way he felt, of late. He was simple in the means of going to work and coming home, something he was now better at than he had been in previous years.

He was honest in that he accepted his setbacks as just that, in knowing he deserved nothing beyond what he made happen, and what drove his days. These began and ended with her. This was the happiest she had been since moving to Los Angeles, and the girls seemed to enjoy his presence more. There were visits to the set to see him at work, and many lunch dates with Beth. This second marriage, a matter of ceremony and romance, felt to him to be more purposeful than the first. The first marriage had been for bare love. This new wedding had been for so many more reasons, and all of them were authoritative.

On set, Emery was not the same man. His lectures having ended for the time being, he now was the man about a story, and performed this role expertly. It was process. Process controlled everything. Keeping the network both pleased and aloof was key, but the process of keeping a show moving had to be upheld, and in this, the network needed more information than ever. Television had become a tricky bitch over the course of few years, and he had seen it up close and quite personal. It continued changing at the rate money for its productions came in, which seemed to be on flatbed truck, and at the rate sponsors signed on and begged for promotion, which seemed to be constant. There was goodness in him and a sense of propriety, but he had reached the point of being somewhat hardened on set. It could happen from war, from divorce, deaths, and it could happen with cancellations and accolades. A man could see too much, and stopped being able to see himself correctly in a mirror. He could fall to vice and make awful mistakes. In seeking to live full measure, a man might follow his urges, but there was no measure deep enough to tell him how much certain urges were costing his soul.

Emery's soul had leaped from his body and rushed across the set but one week back, toward a receptionist. He could no longer see where his soul might have gone. He made up his mind to look for his soul later. Beth would help him. His marriage had never been stronger, and the occasional receptionist might be a small, quiet reward for hard work, so long as Beth never knew.

She knew the day after it happened.

FADE IN:

EXT. Dusty plains, 1867 - Afternoon

Desolate. The slight sound of wind. Parched dirt from the baking effect of the Sun on this difficult to seed land.

A slow pan over the dusty plains. We see the head of Merrill's horse, LAUDERDALE enter frame, followed by the rest of the animal. We see MERRILL saddled atop it. The two stand there, surveying the distant hills. MERRILL reaches down, lifts his canteen, and removes the cap. We see him take a swig.

(V.O.) HOST ASHER:

Within the soundings of a man is a thing dormant to most eyes, a place in which the whole of his past is stored. Henry Merrill is a man with nothing, a loner who rides atop the dust of the old west. He is a deserter and lives with the shame of abandoning the losing side of a war in which he was expected to die, a man wanted for treason by a government no longer in power, a side of the war now existing solely in the moods and ideals of its southern survivors. Should they find him, he will be hanged.

And so he has traveled west, where he now wanders searching for purpose, life, a future, making do and trying to remain, his resolve hidden deep and a rifle at his side.

Henry Merrill will find what he seeks, somewhere in the lost, outlaw plains of a criminal and seldom-policed west. This is the story of Merrill's search, the story of _The Deserter._

FADE TO:

Morning. When the Sun of a new day rose on the set of the west. Emery woke and wrote. He recorded his notions on cassette and sent them to his secretary. He read these transcriptions and plotted out the story of his protagonist, aware of the continuance he now sensed, and fully planning on the fruits of this labor. He no longer felt strangled by CBS, who, surprisingly, had been eager to pick up the show. Based on the success of the pilot, they had even begrudgingly offered him his old time-slot. The network, something which had caused him incredible grief (though also much income) in the past, had somewhat given him carte blanche with 8 pm. This was unexpected and savored. The gods were glancing down and Emery was looking up. Dozier was thrilled and quite active, serving as Emery's executive producer, no less. It was best, perhaps, to enjoy the good times before any of the bad could come down from on high.

When the Sun set, when the actors were gone and the day had extinguished, he would lay in bed beside his wife, urging back those nightmares of Leyte and the superable degrees of failure to which his thoughts were prone. Caution was his new weapon of choice in many things, and the show was a success. He revised everything with the obedience of a slave and kept pulling the strings of his puppet with a dexterousness that had been gleaned from his history in the medium. Beneficial matters were at hand, so long as one chose to see them as beneficial. With a more realistic eye however, these matters were more slated than actual. When guilt over certain benefits, over specific behaviors, overcame him, he threw it into the typewriter. When this machine was sated, he then possessed only the barest, thinnest guilt. He used this to buy his wife things.

The months passed and Emery traveled the old west on his spirited typewriter, clattering out his stories and absurdities in the form of meritorious wrangling and the interaction of desperate characters, his resolve hidden, and a cassette recorder at his side. The television glittered at times and his work was a flash into homes. He bought a color television and admired the new shows, began pressing the network to let _The Deserter_ go color, too.

The audience was reimbursing him with praise, and his thankfulness was as strong as his work ethic. The long suit of television again shot through his veins with all the spark and temerity for which he had hoped. Things were happening and the prospects of good fortune were not only palpable, but key. The audience was not small, and they were paying attention.

CUT TO:

INT. ASHER LIVING ROOM - 10:00pm

An orderly, lit living room with the general amenities. A television is on and BETH ASHER is sitting on the couch. She is alone.

Scene is silent. We see BETH ASHER in pajamas, sitting on the couch, watching television. Several lights are on. Credits begin scrolling down the television screen and she yawns, looking up at a clock on the wall. We get an ECU of the clock, showing the time, 10pm. BETH gets up, seeming annoyed, and turns the television off. After this, she moves toward the window, draws the shades aside, and peers out.

CUT TO:

BETH'S POV. We see the street outside, past the front yard. We're panning left and right, looking up and down the road out front. All seems still. We CUT TO a medium shot from outside, of BETH in the window. After a moment, she releases the shades. We CUT TO The living room interior again. Same shot as before. We see BETH turn from the window. She has a sour look, and returns to the couch, sitting down but not relaxing into it. She sits upright, somewhat rigid in the still, silent room. She is slowly turning her wedding ring around and around on her finger with her other hand. She seems to be unfocused, staring toward the floor absently. Her thoughts appear to be sad ones. Beat. We slowly begin to hear the quiet sound of an extended laugh-track, growing louder and louder. The sound becomes overwhelming.

CUT BLACK

**Chapter Thirty-Two**

Bernie Dozier and Emery Asher sat in a room, the mood stale and the air suffocating. It was here, in offices like this, and in a mood such as this, that Emery had in the past been shot through the head with the network gun, that he might then race across the realms to the next job. He took in the design of the walls, the sort of frame around the window. He gauged the sort of desk (too small) and the style of ashtray (blue melmac). Death and birth both took place in offices like this one. Emery had heard the rumor that morning, as had Bernie. _The Deserter_ had faced a few recent complaints from the network, the most prominent being that they wanted more action and less character drama. Emery had added action, but would not compromise with the interactions of characters. It was a smart program by design, not an ongoing, O.K. Corral potboiler.

With rumors of a cancellation in the works, Emery and Bernie had conferred and then chosen to take the offensive, calling the network executive, Bob Teague, for a meeting. Emery was becoming null in spirit by these sorts of arrangements. The difference, this time around, was that it was not Dozier who sat behind the desk relaying the news of cancellation. This time, Bernie stood beside him while another network executive cancelled the show. Emery removed himself from emotion for a moment, something he had learned in previous years, and a behavior that benefitted him. Bernie chewed through his leash and bared his teeth.

"Now look here, Bob, I know how this works. The network wants a viewer rating of 22 for each episode and we had three or four of 'em come in at, what, 18? We got something like an A-, and not that coveted A+, but lemme guess: They're readin' us low and you think no one is watching. Just a few fans, not a productive base."

"Straight to it; good. Well, that's the gist of things, Bernie, except you've never pulled in an 18. Your highest, as you _well know_ , was a 16. Second episode."

"Yeah, yeah. B+, fine. I know all about it. I've been through this before, so you can cut out any horseshit. Don't forget, I had your job, Bob, right here at this network, and I know how all of this works, you hear? It's because of me that kids like you get to have this job, and you can't fool us."

"I suppose that's also true, Bernie," Teague said, dry, "I have my position over you because you were incompetent and got yourself fired for Emmy Asher, here. I thank the both of you."

"You go suck your mother's tits," Bernie said.

"All right, one more-"

"I WON'T DO THIS AGAIN," Bernie shouted, kicking his foot hard against the executive's desk, which moved several inches. Both Bob Teague and Emery were startled at this outburst.

"Calm down, Bernie. We're still talking, here," Emery advised. Teague said nothing. There was a tangible motion of nerves and triggers flaring in all present, synapses snapping up the feed and fingers twitching at the ends of weak arms. Emery was startled by Bernie's reaction but chose to breathe and not get caught up in explosiveness. Bernie regained himself quickly and re-launched his appeal.

"That was too much, I'm sorry. I'm calm. Bob, just listen. You're plain wrong about the audience. And I was, too. Let's be civil, here. Let's just examine how this all works: It's Asher, is the thing." Emery glanced at his producer then, intrigued but angry at being named as the culprit behind the show's cancellation. Bernie was not going in that direction, however.

"I figured it out late on _The Other Side_ ," he continued, "but we had a good show that brought in more than an acceptable audience. Asher's not like other writers, right? We know that. He builds and builds, see? It takes shape over time and it only ever gets bigger and better. Once it catches, and it will, I swear you'll be singin' praise. I can _promise_ you this. We'll all make money. Our audience there got its wind in the second and third season and it kept going right up until the end. That's a fact. Don't make the mistakes I made; they were old-timer mistakes. You're the new blood, here. I'm helping you out. And us. Let's... let's not be stupid."

"Look, I'm sorry, guys, but the numbers don't-"

"Lie. They don't lie. You can stop right there. Don't feed me my own spiel, dickhead. They DO lie because we look for the wrong numbers. You have to give it a season's time. You'll see it by then. Now call your man and let him know. You gotta see this right, is all."

"You call me another name like that or act out again and I'll have you escorted off the lot, you understand, Bernie?"

"Well, if the shoe fits-"

"Oh shut up. Jesus, just shut your mouth for once," Teague said, annoyed, "Here's what's happening: You want me to give you another season to flesh out your show, but your show was supposed to be a hit from the start, all fleshed out and ready, because that's what we're paying for, not practice time. You promised us a gem, not a diamond-in-the-rough. The finished product, on the air, making it. _That_ gets a season. What kind of clown would even think otherwise? It's incredibly simple: You want to sell your better mousetrap, the damn thing better work. Come on, boys, a child could understand this."

There was a moment of quiet in the room that disguised the animosity between all present. The viewer ratings were proving great, but not yet excellent. This was not the sole trouble between the three men in the meeting, however. Emery was agitated with Bernie for what was inevitably a failure on the producer's part to keep the network in the loop on various changes to the structure of the show, while Bernie was angry at Teague for the hasty cancellation of the show. As for Teague, he had never liked Emery, found the writer pompous and arrogant, often treating Emery the way a poor kid belittled a rich kid for the simple act of existing the way they were born. This was a hate triangle, and the sickness within it was only resolvable in two ways: Money or termination. The money was not strong enough at this point in _The Deserter_ 's life, and so came the unstoppable call to get rid of all interested parties. The marriage was wondrous but the sex was not perfect, so the groom wanted a divorce.

"One episode," Bernie said, "Give us one episode into season two. Think of it as a second pilot."

"No episode. No season. Your show isn't providing, Bernie. In fact, I can show you seven ways from Sunday the very complex and _exact_ ways that your show isn't providing. Which numbers do you want to see first? The expense versus recoup? The salaries versus hours of work? The fucking cost of film this year? Or we could talk about the show's intake versus what we think we can get from your replacement? That's a good one. A real eye-opener. Or, mind you, maybe we could go over the viewer ratings. By week. Hell, by _act_. Let's have a talk about your inflated paychecks. Anyone want to talk about that? How's that hacienda treating you, Asher? You put in a pool, right? You know, while we're here, I could give you some figures about the cost of ads in the magazines and papers and the radio spots, if that would be helpful. I've got it all right here in this cabinet. Or better yet, how about I tell you what's actually being watched every Saturday night at 9:30 p.m. when your show airs? Because it's not us. They're watchin' that pretty billboard girl on _Hollywood Palace_ over on ABC, right up until we get 'em back with _Gunsmoke_ at 10:00. _"_

Bernie looked at Emery then, waiting for whatever it was he expected the writer to do or state. In this instance, the writer, uncertain that anything should be said at all, followed the path of his newest protagonist, and sought to disappear into the west, to be alone for a time and regenerate his exhausted soul. Emery turned and made for the door slowly. Bernie only sighed. Emery grasped the knob, but he did not open the door.

"This is an asylum," Emery said over his shoulder, "Writers. Producers. Networks. The actors. It's a mess. I think that's a reasonable conjecture. These lots are full of mad doctors, mad patients, and the powers on high chase their mad numbers... It's like a horny wolf tracking the smell of a female's hindquarters. Everyone is in heat here, even when they're frigid. I feel sick to my stomach every time I shake someone's hand, anymore. I'm leaving now. I think I just want to be done with the lot of you."

"Em, what are you doing? We got him on the ropes, here," Dozier said, emphatic.

"No, you don't," Teague said, "I'm just the messenger."

"I'm going home," Emery stated, opening the door. Dozier followed him, upset and full of twitching activity. His steps were heavy and his breathing quick.

"We'll be back, you underhanded, little shit. You'd better be ready for us," Dozier called back, shutting the door hard.

"Go fuck yourself, Bernie," came the simple response through the wood and glass.

Emery had lost many things of value over the past week. He had worked with a particular fever of being, one that had run high-octane the past five, frenetic months, and certain aspects of this had required more of him than he had supposed would be necessary. The long hours and quick pace of the episodes asked for incessant rewrites, and each episode did not see the start of something new, as had happened with _The Other Side_. The new show had been a serial, and great pains had been taken to control how it unfolded, at the writing level. He had waylaid his sardonic wits in favor of an irony that held more searching. The show had needed a strong, clever balance, and he had struggled with it.

_The Deserter_ had been more of a quest story than a western, but was scalded with the detailing of that time period, to the point it functioned for some as a truer testament to the towns of the old west than previous westerns, those shows and films full of gunfights and cattle rustlers. The critical nature with which the show was viewed and described came under its _own_ scrutiny for this, and the episodes aired had caused critics to turn on one another, creating an ongoing sense of controversy, not with the show itself, but with the manner one watched it. Joseph Barnes, the tyrannical panner of television shows for the monthly Los Angeles Arts rag, had adored the story, calling it best new show of 1965, while Clayton Moore from the Times had lambasted the notion of a thinking-man's western as frivolous and reaching. Then these two giants began sniping at one another in subsequent articles. Up in San Francisco, Graham Powell, the potent theater critic turned television enthusiast, had somehow become involved in the argument as well and now all three were throwing gasoline bombs around. This had gotten other critics to take more notice, critics that mentioned the show in their columns and articles, in whatever light they chose to see it. This had been a wonderful boon to the show, and had many watching. Emery's approach, using the western format as a marinade with which to soak his conceits and story, had payed off for all but the network, itself.

Numbers. Counts. Averages that arrogated legitimacy and replaced it with the irrefutable. Numbers and polls tended to remove truth and replace it with the unarguable. Most people could not discern the difference. Logical, reasonable numerals and statistics indicated things far beyond their own reach, little machines that chugged away perfectly, never needing oil or fuel, never faltering or diminishing in strength or output. They were too perfect, however. They showed you a thing that was their own. When applying numbers to a work of art, you received a new work of numbers, minus the art. They propagated their own, never the subject they represented. They were important and precise and often crucial, but they also made extragavant claims and were given more power than was reasonable.

Viewers were tuning in to see what Henry Merrill would do next, where he would go, to see if he was ever going to find the faux-villain of the series, known only as Sanderson. People found the drifter protagonist to be rough and charming, but a bit tortured, and they wanted to see him face more torture, to see him react to the idiosyncrasies of the world he had come to inhabit. They wanted to watch him be lost, not in numbers, but in his worth as a man and his deep-reaching self doubt. The audience was made of people, but they were represented with numbers, and given over to equations and time-slot scheming designed to pack them into their couches as if by the accountable measure of movie seats. The network did not want to give any person a thing to watch, if that thing was not also watched by the neighbors. It was all or nothing. Greater than. Greater than. Greater than.

Not half of one season. Eleven episodes had aired, and there were three more already shot and prepared to air, with eighteen more to film, but that would not be. Henry Merrill was indeed lost. He was lost to the dusty, tumbleweed-scratched floor of the television industry, where all the shrimp tails and chicken bones were tossed. An art of dozens had been knocked from the table as garbage by mere _prediction._ Someone higher up at the network was divining, through handfuls of not-so-connected numbers, that a different show would reach into a few more homes.

This was a common dilemma, an ongoing bonfire, and _The Deserter_ was but one more hunk of wood thrown atop it. The network set their goals incredibly high, always shooting for an amazing turnout with a high interest rate, and if that rate became unrealistic, they canned the show, rather than adjust the rate. They could cancel a program they had banked on as quickly as they could then start another. It was saturation, and there was no shortage of proposed pilots anymore. Show after show, until one stuck and became the big one. They fished an open sea with several sorts of bait, and threw back all they caught but the Swordfish, who rarely ever bit. Emery and his fans had been tossed back, not good enough. The murk welcomed them into irrelevancy. They had been on the line so shortly. Not half of one season.

_The Deserter_ , now burning down, was to be gone by morning and would be buried over quickly. A shallow grave. There was no shame in it. Emery had little guilt over yet another cancellation. No, his particular shame and guilt, quite present in him now, had been furnished by another behavior, one that was now under scrutiny at home. This would be waiting for him when he returned. The trouble would be amplified by each step across his lawn toward the front door. It already echoed within the house like a scream in a damp cavern. He had been up to awful things, with a nice woman, and he was not the only one in his home with knowledge of it. Beth was not insulted, and strangely, she did not seem much hurt. No, she was a touch disgusted with him, and instead of threats or arguments, she had simply begun to think so, so much less of him. This was not a punishment, but fact, and it was the way their marriage would function for an undefined period of time. She had known for nearly three months before letting on. She had acted the role of normality with perfection. The truth was that Emery had become a failure in the one place he had never thought it could infiltrate, and he now felt utterly lost. Beth had no interest, at the moment, of helping to find him, and this was to be the new normal.

The two men made their way from the building with haste. Bernie was swearing under his breath and his head had become a bundled oval of nerves and tight fibers. Being angry looked to shave ten years off his age. They stopped near Emery's roadster and Bernie kept talking, giving Emery no cordial way to vacate, so Emery decided to stay put a few minutes, let the producer shake his rattle at the mobile. Each had a cigarette, mulling over the cancellation and the dismay of being deported together, again. The vow for a comeback was staunch in Bernie. He uttered 'This won't stand' more than a few times, which became a sort of catch-phrase. Emery tried to placate the man and cool him off, but there was no calming Bernie Dozier just then. The aged producer wanted to be angry and was going to have it out. Emery also wanted to be angry, but discovered he could not find it. There was simply no anger in him to summon.

Emery had been on the receiving end of the numbers-gun for too long, so far back as his radio days, and perhaps even as distant as his military service. This was an unavoidable devastation, and as much as a man could become accustomed to tragedy, to accept the always-near state of being failed, Emery was riled strongly inside. Where could he put it? What might he do with this fear and sense of loss? Nothing. He simply breathed. He looked to get past this newest, occupational trouble as quickly as he could. In this way, tragedy became setback, the rupture of a dream became business-as-usual, and even failure, itself, could become but the tawdry stuff of the daily soul. His work was most assuredly at home, and it would not be easy.

"I'm sorry about your company," Emery said, getting into his car. Dozier frowned before running his hand through his slicked hair, of which there was little. He had put much of his new company, Fairway Productions, into _The Deserter_ , hoping the show would become his own whale he might put on the network hook. With the cancellation, Fairway might get rid of him. This would be a complete loss to Bernie. He would be unemployed, yes, but the worst sort: Unemployable. Bernie examined his hand then for traces of grease.

"Em, here's the thing," he said, "This is no big deal. Would you be willing to try another show with Fairway? Different network, for sure, but give us another shot? I know I can talk 'em into it."

"Bernie, I just don't..."

"You have doubts, sure. Of course you do. Who wouldn't?"

"Right, I just-"

"Listen, I- I'm full of fire here, you gotta know I am. I mean, look at me. And I have no doubts about you. Not before, not now. If we get the right show, and I know you've got the right show in your head, I know you do, it'll take us somewhere big. We've got all the cards for it. Every last one."

"I'm sorry, Bernie. I don't... I don't feel very good out here anymore."

"Please. I'm sayin' please, here, Emery. Just think about it. I can make this right. You know I will because it's all I have. All my time, everything, it's ready to go. There's nothing else I _can_ do, so you know you're gonna get my all."

"You should call Calvin Moffat. He still doesn't have anything regular lined up. Lots of ideas and he'd work hard for you."

There was a pause as Bernie slowly accustomed to the rejection. Then he gave a short nod and began to peer out over the parking lot as if waiting for someone to arrive. He was antsy, his adrenalin and ideas petering out and leaving him atop the crutches of the unknown. He stepped forward and gave Emery a pat against the shoulder then.

"So that's that?"

"Yeah."

"All right, then. I'll get all this settled in the next few weeks. I give it ten-to-one they try to fuck us on the three ghosts. I'll fix that, though. We'll get paid."

"I'm sure of it. Let me know if there's anything you need."

"Well, I need some damn shows. But look, for whatever it's worth, thanks for giving me a shot, Em. Two of 'em now. It's too bad they don't get it. It's a real shame."

"No, Bernie. Thank _you_."

CUT TO:

EXT. A RESIDENTIAL streeT - DAY

A nice neighborhood with large houses and Los Angeles haciendas in the distance. There are a many children about, and mothers, as well as several old men.

We see Emery's Roadster 6 in a long shot, moving down the street at a comfortable pace. We cut to Emery behind the wheel as he drives. We hear the voice of Lieutenant Merrill from the backseat. We cut back and forth between them as the conversation unfolds.

MERRILL:

A nice street. All these children. Curious that there are no younger men about.

EMERY:

It's the middle of the day. And a Tuesday. The only men on this street right now are sick in bed or old. And me.

MERRILL:

Are you sick, my boy? Or old?

EMERY:

(eyes glazed over)

No, I'm something else.

MERRILL:

You go for walks, soldier, on your eight little legs, and get lost in that head of yours and have to call for help. You're no killer.

EMERY:

(distant)

No, sir. I suppose I'm not.

MERRILL:

A shame. Life is a hunt; a series of maneuvers. Lights a fire in your skull when you do it right.

EMERY:

(sad)

I can't make anything work anymore. Maybe- maybe I malfunctioned somewhere. Or it's possible I just wasn't designed for this sort of life.

MERRILL:

It does keep breaking down.

EMERY:

But I have so much work to do.

MERRILL:

Work? Formally discharged! There's no work. You're out, private. Fired, by a better man, and right to your smug face. How very cosmopolitan. And now look at them. Look at all the mothers' faces as you drive past. Their husbands are not present and they're noticing you. Isn't that nice? They're thinking thoughts.

(shakes head)

Where ARE the other husbands? They must be at work, don't you think? I wonder if they're faithful to their wives.

EMERY:

Leave me alone.

MERRILL:

(leaning back and lost in thought)

That man Cully down the street, who you dislike... does he have affairs? No, not him. He wouldn't do that, would he? Does he have a job? Yes, I'm certain he does. Likely for many, many years now. And he comes home at the same time each night, and he eats the same boring meals, and he loves the same woman, and they go on vacations wherein they buy trinkets and windchimes.

But you're not like him, are you, Private? No, you're better. Higher rank, maybe. Why, look at you! Here you are, going home in the middle of a beautiful day! But then, there's nowhere else for you to be, is there? You can't hunt, you can't bring down game anymore, and no one who wants you around.

EMERY:

(eyes beginning to water, choking up)

It keeps happening. It's- nothing stays put. Everything keeps moving around and I don't get to keep things. I don't get to have them even when they're mine. I don't like this place and I don't like what it does to a man.

MERRILL:

Ah, but at least you have your good marriage. And those two wonderful daughters! Well, it's true that they don't really know you so clearly, but there's time! The wife will help them to get to know their father, surely. After all, she knows you. She's the one person who always has and always will. What a grand union marriage is. You're nearly home, Private, but then... do you think the wife will be pleased to see you?

EMERY:

(clearing throat, trying to regain composure)

No. No, she will not.

CUT TO:

A roof shot of the Roadster 6 slowly turning into the driveway. The engine cuts off, but the driver-side door does not open. Beat. We slowly ZOOM down, toward the windshield from the roof of Emery's house, until we have a C.U. through the glass. He's just sitting there, alone and blank.

FADE TO:

The empty house with the familiar smell. Emery walked into the kitchen and hastily began scattering whiskey into a glass. No ice, just the amber liquid. He glanced out through the kitchen window at the middle of Tuesday. The house was cool from his having forgotten to turn the heat on before leaving for the meeting. The day was somewhat warm however, and he sat on the couch in the living room, drinking his whiskey and wrinkling up his suit, staring at the black of the television screen.

Beth and the girls were out. The girls were in school and Beth was in town somewhere, likely returning the sweater great Aunt Vera had sent Rebecca for Christmas, and which had not fit. Vera, in her advanced age, seemed to think Rebecca was still about ten years old. The sweater had been too small for her, but too large for Vivian, who disliked sweaters anyway. There would likely be other errands involved in the trip into downtown, and so Emery had the cool house to himself for a spell. He eyed his typewriter and thought to sit down and begin something. A skit. A pilot. Work on the stage-play for _All the System_ that was still eluding him, perhaps now out of spite. The mood was not in him.

He walked over and set his hand on the typewriter, feeling how cold to the touch it was in the unheated home. After a moment, he made his way to the thermostat and turned the heat up, fetched the coat he had only taken off a minute ago. He stepped outside and locked the door, returning to his car. Being alone was for the deserter, not Emery. It was for punch-drunk sods who had no family, no friends. The isolation some saw as hardening and a creator of character was in fact a maker of threadbare sanity and prolonged misery. There were scripts he could pull out and rewrite, revision that could be done, but he did not want to be alone with his work. He could not trust it and this frightened him. The ignition turned over and he left the block, making his way across town with more on his mind than he could handle just then.

The truth was suddenly without brakes, the towering, shaky verity of his ability with words, coming down all around him. Perhaps he was bad at his craft, after all. Perhaps he had only seen the praising public, and not the true thing for which he supposedly wrote, the masses that shrugged at him or frowned, the masses that could care less for him. All the scripts, the shows, the awards and movies... a gold path he had thought he achieved, but that might have simply been a path of blind luck notched by a bit of random selection at the start. Each shining Emmy could well have been the television equivalent of a Purple Heart.

Did he not at times complain that these awards often went to untalented writers that seemed to be chosen for little more than favoritism or luck? Could it be that he, himself, was one of these? He had often claimed that people were beginning to favor mediocrity in television. Did he believe this? He did. And people enjoyed his shows... Perhaps _he_ was mediocre, as well. Emery fiddled with the radio in the car and hastily lit a cigarette. He rolled the window down and tried to focus on driving.

"A lucky hack. No. No, because you work hard... But you are one. That's all, a dissimulater. A haircut on a broom. That's not true, you're ahead of the pack most days. _That's_ true. That's what happens. But you've burned up. Have you? Fuck yes. Look at you... oh god, I'm going out of my skull. I need another drink. Maybe I should be a teamster; that's a secure job. I wouldn't get fired every season. Okay, I have to relax. I just need to relax. I'll go to Larry's. Yeah, I should do that. I miss Larry. Larry's a good person and he's had a nervous breakdown and I should go see him before I have one, too."

CUT TO:

INT. LARRY BELMONT'S DEN - AFTERNOON

Various articles of the writing life are positioned with personal charm across a desk, which is situated before and panes of a window. There is a poster of _The Other Side_ 's main title on a back wall near a window, in a glass frame. There are some pictures hung here and there of Larry standing near other people for whom he seems to hold respect.

C.U. of one such picture, an image of Larry and Emery standing with their arms around a set painter coated in what would appear to be an entire spilled bucket of gray paint. Their suits are being ruined in this moment and they're smiling with genuine fun.

LARRY is sitting in a recliner near a wall of the room, and EMERY sits in the chair at the desk, which is turned around to face the room. He holds a beer in his hand and the two men continue the conversation they've been having.

ASHER:

(concerned)

And they really have no idea?

BELMONT:

(clearing his throat several times)

No, they've had lots. But they take it all back as quick as they say. First, they thought Lou Gehrig's disease. Wasn't that. Thankfully. They thought it was multiple sclerosis, too, but that was a bust. I just don't have the right symptoms. It keeps changing. I am considering myself an enigma. But Helen's going crazy, I think.

CUT TO:

An ill man and a well one. Emery had been shocked by Larry's appearance, which did not demonstrate the seasonal onset of a flu, bronchitis, or even the pneumonia he had thought, until today, to be Larry's actual trouble. Calvin Moffat, several months back, had supposed over the phone that Larry was suffering from syphilis, but Emery had doubted this much. There had also been talk among people that knew Larry that the problem was malaria, of all things, which would have been a devastating and horrible thing, but now, eight months from its onset, the illness that gripped Larry Belmont was beyond anything Emery had seen. He had simply thought that Larry was quite ill, and that the younger man would need time to recover from whatever trouble he had contracted. Emery now understood, however, that Larry was more than sick, and that the fellow writer was not recovering.

The good friend, four years Emery's younger, looked to be in his fifties. His face had begun to wrinkle with age, his hair had begun to gray, and his hands shook with an immediacy that was unsettling. Parkinson's disorder, it would seem, but attached to something far worse. The severe trouble was taking its toll on Larry's mind, as well. He had problems summarizing what he thought, or keeping track of the conversation. He was slow to speak, and careful. Emery was horrified and tried to push this facet of the illness from his mind. Larry's personality, his very being, was wrapped up in a unique and talented mind. It was more of him than his appearance had ever been. To see this mind degrade in such a way struck a deathly chill into Emery. This illness was attacking and devouring Larry's self, not just his body.

Emery swallowed and found himself furious with the medical establishment. What the hell had happened? He wondered when the klieg lights were going to come on and the cameras were going to stop rolling. He kept expecting Nina and the effects man to enter the room any moment to work on the transformative Methuselah makeup Larry had to be wearing.

"It uh, was first just a 'mysterious brain disease'? Which was scary," Larry continued.

"Damn, I'm sure it was."

"But then they added Pick's Disease. And that's- I don't know. They haven't removed that diagnosis yet, but I don't think it's that. Doctor Dolkin says he thinks I have Alzheimer's, too."

"Jesus, Larry. That's just impossible. That can't be right."

"No. A doctor in the valley- god, what was her name- it was... I don't know her name. But there keep being more doctors. I have four now."

"Okay."

"So, _she_ says it's maybe related to spinal meningitis. Because I had that when I was a kid."

"So, what's the bottom line? What are they saying at this point? How long to cure it?"

"Depends on who you ask. Some say not for years. UCLA threw me in every machine they had and... and they poked an awful lot of needles in me, too. I... they made me get naked and walk around all day with them, room to room. And like a duck walk? Like squatting. It was funny. I had a gown but it was like nothin'. Helen thought it was funny, too."

"Right, okay."

"But uh, UCLA... they said it's a death sentence."

Emery leaned back a moment and gathered his thoughts. The last statement had that intrinsic shock that could stop most people in their tracks the instant it was uttered. He looked on his friend and his mind spun. He didn't know what to say, whether to believe it, or how to react. His first notion was to abstain from accepting the statement. Doctors had been wrong before, and in Larry's case, they could easily be wrong again.

"No. No, that'll turn out to be untrue," Emery said.

"Well, I'm gonna die, Em. I mean, I'm- look at me. I'm aging. That- that's how it started, I think. Helen noticed but I didn't think much of it, then Calvin said something and I thought, _okay, that's two; I'd better get checked out_. My stomach hurt and I'd get headaches. It started up with that. I still have all of that."

"I remember you talked about having stomach aches around the second season of _The Other Side_. You were always guzzling Bromo."

"Yeah, that stuff. I don't drink it anymore. Doesn't help. I can't really drink much of anything. Lost almost thirty pounds now and so Helen figured uh, maybe cancer, like her uncle, and I thought so, too, but the doctors say it's definitely not that."

"That's a relief."

"Well, it's worse, I think. The Bromo was for my stomach, but there was more than that goin' on. I just didn't tell anyone because it was so weird."

"I figured you just had ulcers like Dozier and Rowe."

"Naw, no ulcers. Just stomach trouble and headaches. But... now, that was the start, because I started looking older. Really fast. Right after _Other Side_ was over. Helen kept on me about it because it was... it got dramatic. I could see it in the mirror. Uh... I was with a doctor then and he didn't know anything. But I didn't want to say anything to my friends."

"They think you're aging faster than usual?" This was said more in conversational lead than an actual question. It was obvious from Larry's appearance that he was fifteen or so years past where he was supposed to be. It was flooring, but Emery didn't want to express that he had already noticed it.

"Pff. You see me. Helen figures it at two years to a month. I think it's a little faster than that."

"Two—"

"Like about every month, I age around two years. I'll go through two-and-a-half decades every time you have a birthday. Like twenty-four years in a year... yeah."

"No, that's insane, Larry. That's-"

"By next Christmas, I'll be just past seventy. Doctor... oh, it was, uh... well, he ran the UCLA tests, anyway, and he gave me this. It's good reading."

Larry got to his feet and hobbled to his bookshelf. Emery was aghast at his movement, the crippled nature of it, the awkward gait, and the bent back. It was horrifying. Not two years ago, Emery had run about the set with this man, his good friend, laughing and working hard. This was a capable human being, but now was as if a man who had lived thirty years of hard labor and tyrannical punishment. Emery had to fight to stay sitting, to stay in the room, mortified with what life was doing to Larry Belmont.

"Here it is," Larry said then, retrieving a bundle of papers from atop several books, handing them to Emery before making his troubled, hard-breathing way to his recliner. Emery kept a tear in, but this was getting to be too much for him to hold back. He distracted himself by clearing his throat and looking over the papers, fishing in his pocket for his cigarettes. Belmont directed him to the third page, near the bottom. Emery found the passage in question, one addressed to Dr. Dolkin from a Doctor Porte: _We have determined that_ _there is no treatment for this disease. It is permanent and terminal. Mr. Belmont may live from six months up to three years, but likely not reach that maximum. He will decline in health and the disease will overcome him more and more, to the point at which he won't be able to stand up. Once bedridden, the disease will progress rapidly. He will not feel any pain. His mind will deteriorate into incognizance, and in those final days, he will likely not know his whereabouts, who he is, or even that he is dying. Treatment at this point should focus on dignity and comfort._

Holding an emotion back was plausible until the overwhelming struck itself against one's mind. The paper fan of Emery's resolve not to cry had no power over the gale that now filled the room. He covered his face with his hands, his head lightly motioning in his breath's heaves, shoulders shaking without sound. Belmont did not move or speak. He sat in his recliner with the air of a person who was ruminating on an expected disappointment, as if thoughtfully going over the unfavorable report card that had arrived from his child's school. Several moments passed and Emery lifted his head and rubbed his eyes clear with his sleeve, coating his sadness with the tin-foil resolve he had managed to build up again.

"Unh... Christ," Emery said, getting hold of himself.

"Bizarre, right?"

"Larry, it's like something you'd write."

"That's what I keep telling Helen."

"How- how is she? With all of this?"

"Not good, Em. Not good at all. She's a sweetie, but... well maybe... maybe you could have Beth come over sometime. Helen uh... just she could use a friend, is all."

"Consider it done."

"Say, how's that uh, that new show? I've been watching. Well, I fall asleep sometimes before, but I've seen most of it. You got something there. Hey, I remember when you wrote that, too, because remember when you told me about it? We were at that Irish pub where the guy said television was a homosexual art."

Emery let out a snort of relief, both for the subject change and the silliness with which it had affected him. His day's troubles were nothing when compared to the awful, unfair, horribly creeping end that Larry now faced. It was a tragic stipend of life that all would die in time, but to go like Larry... it was a macabre and brutal fate. How could it be real? Emery found himself thinking that networks cancelled shows, but they could not cancel a writer. They ended productions, but not the people who made them. What was happening to Belmont was total rescission, the cancellation of a human being from existence, and in a manner atrocious, cruel, and wholly undeserved.

"Well, they cancelled it," Emery said before giving a slight but wry smile, "Just today, in fact."

Larry grunted and sat up, seeming to be in pain, hunching over his stomach with a reddened face. Emery was alarmed until Belmont's mouth opened and the laughing poured out. This was a huge laugh and Larry fell into it wholeheartedly, holding his stomach as he did so. Emery viewed this odd reaction at first with surprise, and concern for the clutching of the stomach that accompanied Larry's laughter. This particular vision of Belmont, behind the disease and altered appearance, the Belmont of previous years laughing at Emery's cancellation with utmost hilarity, caused an explosion of much-needed mirth in Emery's mind.

"Business as usual, right?" Emery said. Belmont's laughter gained a brief hoot as he tried to control himself and settle down, finding that he could not.

"You- you sorry, old shit! Look at you!" Larry managed between outbursts. Emery groaned and shook his head, feigning disdain at Belmont taking so much humor in the show being cancelled. Holding back his tears was somewhat easier than holding back a laugh, but Emery failed to do either that afternoon, and soon both men were, for a short while, in another time and place entirely.

**Chapter Thirty-Three**

The year was Rebecca becoming fourteen and Vivian reaching nine. The year was Beth taking up the stately art of cooking Chinese food (which Emery more than enjoyed, having become enamored by it during his visit to Hong Kong), and then a minor interest in photography, and at one point, she had even learned how to replace a window the oldest daughter had shattered while stumbling with an empty mug. The year was Emery throwing scripts at every target he could spot, to no real result, the filming and releasing of his first Pacific Pictures story, and the slow recuperation (under pledges of respect and an end to foolishness) of his marriage. These were the months of mending and attention, and in them, the Ashers were waging a decent assault toward that nuclear family of which America was so fond. There was more, however. The year was also the haggard, soul-twisting witness of Larry's dusting away, a fleet descent into the crippling, sanity-devouring smoke of a human being.

FADE OUT:

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FADE IN:

INT. ASHER STUDY - AFTERNOON

A mid-sized room in the Asher house with a window view. There are book-shelves everywhere, all of them packed and cluttered. He has two waste-bins, one on either side of an expensive-looking desk. In the desk's middle is a typewriter and there is an ashtray off to the side, near a ream of blank paper. A cup of coffee sits on the typewriter's other side, near a stack of paper that is no longer blank.

EMERY enters with his mail, sitting down at the desk. He opens a large manila envelope. From this, he withdraws a series of papers, about seven. Emery reads an attached, handwritten letter. As he reads to himself, we hear:

V.O. (Helen Belmont)

Emery, he wanted you to have a look at this. He's under contract with MGM for a film, but there is no way he can do it. The extenuating circumstances of his illness are too severe for writing stories. I know you will not be able to do anything with this, but he was extremely pleased with the idea that he might send it to you, and I didn't want to take that away from him. If you would, maybe you could tell him you were fond of it? He has so much respect for you. He's been working on this every now and then, for months now. A compliment to your biggest fan would mean so much to him.

We see EMERY turn the manuscript and flip quickly through the pages. He seems confused at small number of pages. After scanning over them a moment, we get an ECU of the script's first page, which is but a title in bold, two returns, and a byline:

Somebody Bet on the Nag

by Lawrence Belmont

EMERY looks over the page with mirth.

EMERY:

Lawrence, huh? Well, good for you.

EMERY turns the page, seeming impressed with what he's reading. We cut back and forth between small segments of sentences and Emery's moving eyes. He lights a cigarette, continues reading. We see him nod as he scans quickly through the second page. By the third page, he has lost his smile. Medium shot as he sets the manuscript down on the desk and gives a strong sigh. We hear a typewriter's end-line bell and we hear the return carriage slide into place.

CUT TO:

The empty, dark study. The hours quiet. One in the morning was a still house. Beth and the girls had long been asleep. Emery sat in a tavern near his home, drinking and smoking and trying not to think about Larry. Banishing those thoughts was implausible, however. The manuscript, written over several months, was as if a perfect cross section of Larry's deterioration. The loose collection of pages were pock-marked in typewriter fades, seeming to indicate that a small amount was written, then forgotten for days or more, before another section was written. Emery could follow Larry's starts and stops with ease, and these had sent a chill through the older writer. The opening had been strong and well-wrought, but by the second page, the spelling had begun to falter and the grammar fell apart. By the fourth page, Larry had stopped using script format.

CUT TO:

INT. ASHER STUDY - DAWN

Beth enters the dim room and turns the light on. She discovers her husband asleep in the chair, his head down on the desk. She approaches and jostles him.

BETH:

(annoyed)

Honey, get up. Go to bed. You're in the study.

EMERY:

Hmm?

BETH:

(suddenly frowning in disgust)

Oh, for the love of- Emery Asher, you reek like a bar. No, don't go to the bed. Go sleep on the couch. I'll bring you a blanket.

We see EMERY stand, a little puzzled and still seeming drunk. He makes his way clumsily from of the room. Beth remains, trying to piece together what is happening with her husband. After a moment, she reaches over and gets one of his cigarettes, lights it, lost in thought, standing in the study and smoking. After a beat, she glances down and sees Larry's manuscript. She picks it up with interest and looks at the first page. We again hear a typewriter's bell and return carriage.

CUT TO:

Medium shot of Emery's typewriter, a Bader's Slim Touch Electric, on the kitchen table. The device is on, and we can hear the electric hum. We slowly zoom toward the typewriter as we hear Larry Belmont's voice reading a script. His voice begins strong, but soon disintegrates into gibberish and indecipherable noise. As we reach an ECU of the typewriter, Larry's voice completely dissolves into the hum of the machine. The page in the typewriter has been crookedly inserted, and exhibits the single, unfinished line: "Dear Helen, please extend my congratulations to". A third time, we hear a typewriter's bell and return carriage.

CUT TO:

BETH in the study. She has finished the piece and now sets the manuscript back on the desk where she found it. She is no longer smoking and the cigarette butt is lightly smoldering in the ashtray, improperly snuffed. We hear the bell, the return carriage, and then the characteristic sound of a page being yanked from a typewriter.

LAP DISSOLVE TO:

The writing of a child. That was all that remained for him. Beth fetched a blanket from the cupboard near the bathroom and made her way into the living room. She found her foul-smelling husband drunkenly passed-out on the couch, lying on his stomach with one leg hanging over, resting on the floor. She knew him so well. She knew what hurt least and what hurt most, and while she did not understand where he went in his head, or where his troubles were kept, she most certainly understood why he went there, and she was best to leave these things be. She had suspected Emery of falling back into bad behavior, that perhaps he had gone out late the previous night to meet a woman. She understood what had happened, now.

Whatever muse Larry Belmont had served was gone, as was most of the poor man's mind. What remained was tragic and upsetting, an oblivious series of unconnected thoughts told in light breaths from the manger of senility. Beth decided, looking down at her disordered husband, that she would never question him about this odd night. She did not need to hear him explain what she knew. Emery had always seen the younger man as a writer, of course, but they knew one another best through what they wrote. Acts and conceits and characters and scenes... these made the sharp personality of Emery's friend and protege, and much of the two writers' friendship had taken place on page, not in the actual world. Larry's final loss of ability, his deterioration, had frightened Emery intimately, reaching a unique and hidden sort of place in her husband. This was a raw and well-defended sort of interior where her husband's hubris, conceitedness, and all of his personal horrors were conjured and fed. It was a fortification into which she would never go, nor want to; he was ugly when he was injured, no matter how deep or shallow the shrapnel went. Tragedy made him petulant and difficult.

Poor Helen. The woman must have been losing her mind being in that house. Beth would visit her later in the day, while the girls were in school. Perhaps Emery would come with her. No, she would make him come with her. Helen, who had been curt, at first, became a kind and warm person once she got to know someone. This took years, however. What would Helen do? When Larry was gone...

Beth wouldn't have wished Larry's illness on the most violent of enemies, and Helen deserved more than her present, better than her probable future. The woman deserved more of her good past. Poor Helen Belmont. The world was cruel. The world was so goddamned cruel.

CROSSFADE TO:

Letters of request. Letters from fans. The postman and his bag and his blasé smile. Emery spread out each day's letters on the kitchen table and sorted them into groups. The first was quite small: Offers for work, and payments for services rendered. The second stack was larger: Letters of the fan variety. The third group was very small, if there was one, and consisted of personal mail from family or friends, while the last stack, usually meager, was more ominous: Bills and dues. His blue mailbox, despite being newly painted, was as if an old, barbed anemone into which he let his hand be drawn before pulling it back, always to disappointment. The fan mail lessened this disappointment, and in fact cheered him much, but those letters did not offer work. Emery was, as usual, being offered much in the way of advertisement, and as with his previous cancellations, he had begun to take these jobs with a form of repent, feeling as if these were a way to consolidate his worries into one simple device: Money. The more he focused on gaining those coveted checks that might reinforce his security, the less he needed to doubt his writing, and the less time he spent thinking about Larry.

Emery's appearance might be used for little but money, at times, and this was one such span. Behind his face, however, were worries and stories. They fermented until he dashed them apart or got them down on page, typing in the late hours and once again relegating himself as a person with a foot in freelance. The hum of the electric typewriter was agitating and seemed as if a slight tease; he had been unsuccessful with his stories of late. Unlike his experience in the past cancellations, he was not being pitched on shows anymore, even bad ones. The number of rejections his stories were pulling in was equal only to that dire time before his career had truly launched. It was as if the previous ten years had been erased all but for randomly generated fans, and he was only now starting down the path of a writer. This might have been refreshing to some, in a soul-searching sense, but to Emery, the new rejection level was a massive setback. He did not want to start over; too much had happened, and was still happening. He simply felt to be no longer invited, and restarting his writing career from scratch was, in the personal sense, somewhat taboo to him. This was also the sort of undertaking that might prove impossible.

Several radio stations had contacted him for voice work, narrating small specials and the occasional commercial program. They felt his voice was versed, and would be recognizable enough that it might serve as an adequate representation of his appearance or waning celebrity. This gave him many ideas, and he had followed them with much heart, approaching various documentary producers and several production companies that created the new early-evening rage: Nature programs. Through this venturing, he had secured a short stint as narrator for an undersea show by the celebrated Rémy Desmarais, and was given the reigns to write and narrate introductions for two speculative one-offs. There was the Mars special to which he had given his voice, and a particularly interesting program dealing with feudal Japan. There was the two-part, much-hyped UFO "documentary", and even a tale called _The Voyage of the Beagle_ , which followed Charles Darwin's travels while doing the research that would lead to his theory of evolution. This last was a narration job offered to Emery based on _Passing of the Hand_ , his second movie with Pacific, which had now come out to horrid reviews, though seemed publicly to be a popular movie. While he didn't want to propel his connection to the evolution theme, he needed the work.

His face and voice were a manner with which money could be made, and while using these made him feel vain, he could not shrug at his need for an income. Already he had accepted an offer to host a radio program, weekly, that would have him describing and orating true tales of the bizarre. He would function in this project as his own sort of Robert Ripley, should it last.

Emery surmised that doing more commercials and narrations would be a way to take care of certain business with television, and his old stomping grounds of radio, while reserving his true self for the new manuscripts he wrote to the week. His writing schedule had bloomed into a thing even he had once thought impossible. He wrote eight hours a day, with only the few necessary breaks to accommodate his body, a writing regiment he could have never gotten away with while actively working on a network show. His writing was getting better, he felt, and more subtle. He was now allowing certain darker roads to emerge in his narrative, something in the past he had pushed off in favor of a more friendly and concise style. Larry Belmont's style had an influence in this.

Abstraction was making its way into his work, and he was discovering a certain longstanding romance with the surreal, a certain manner of metaphor and alternate ingenuity that he had previously only experienced with the occasional, on-page fling. He kept most of these devices to narrative, and had begun putting together a collection of short stories. This was difficult for him, but he was making it happen with a modicum of success. Many were transcribed from his rejected _Other Side_ scripts, and some of these functioned very well in short fiction. There were stories he found himself frowning over, fresh from the typewriter, and still other scripts he found to be outright embarrassing, but this was the nature of writerly obsession. Silly story or not, a script or short story was not to be set aside until he had completed it. This benefitted the good scripts, and prepared him for them, while never worsening the bad ones beyond letting them have a final act and being loosed from his mind.

The hissing had begun, however. With his face bolted onto deodorant commercials and his voice narrating the corny specials on alien life and what-have-you, he was losing much of the respect he had known earlier in the decade. The sixties had started him out with an uncertain sense of failure, and, six years later, his troubles had only worsened. The final insult the public felt he had given them came with the release of _The Passing of the Hand,_ which had been panned by every critic one could dig up.

Emery had written what he felt to be a strong script, based on a successful book with a novel idea. He had then re-written the script repeatedly at the behest of Pacific Pictures. They could not be satisfied, however, and in the end, he had finally been forced, contractually, to abandon his rewrite clause and let their shitty compositors work it over. The result was a bizarre action romp in which a beefy man, a scientist only in the alleged sense, ran about a world populated by apes, shouting and making a general fool of himself until the apes decided he should be publicly put to death. Pacific Pictures had kept Emery's slight hint at romance between the man and one of the ape women, but they had not portrayed any of the apes as being very intelligent. They seemed backward, barely able to feed themselves, living in dull huts and fighting with rifles, yet didn't seem to have a world in which a foundry could have existed to _make_ rifles. It made no sense.

_The Passing of the Hand_ had originally taken place in a simian metropolis, but that script had been hacked to pieces. The silly, countryside locale that most of the movie took place in was more in line with a small commune than a civilized culture. This somewhat destroyed the premise and most of the continuity. A viewer's disbelief could not be suspended, but utterly shoved aside so that action could be used, which the studio writers apparently felt would get the audience's mind from noticing the incongruities, if the studio writers had even thought that far ahead.

The bad locations and the meddling by other writers, as well as by Pacific executives, was not what caused Emery the most trouble. No, the larger problem came about because of the subject matter, which was a thing the Pacific writers had not changed, at the basest element. The premise was that man was a primate, related to apes, and that perhaps his warlike nature and destructive tendencies were things evolution could not breed out of him, and in view of this, man did not deserve the world he had inherited from his ancestors. That particular moral was Emery's initial drive to write the script, and it had somehow made it through all the rewrites and alterations, all the way to the screen.

A man had recently approached him in a Howard Johnson's while he sat and ate with his family:

"Hey, Asher: Saw your ape movie. You just don't have any shame, do you? Come on, apes? Are you kidding me? From men? It's insulting."

"Listen friend, I'm just having lunch with my family and-"

"Don't call me friend. I got better friends. Go back to the other side, jackass."

"Mister, you're gonna walk out of here right now, or I'm gonna throw you out."

"Go to Hell, Asher. Say hello to Darwin while you're there."

Even the neighborhood's mailman had begun giving him grimy looks. Emery's script had been misrepresented heavily, but the ideas at the story's heart had remained somewhat intact. It didn't help that the constant action placed into the final script made the movie more of a silly romp through fantasy than an expository, moral tale. Had the studio handled it the way Emery had planned, much of the lashing he was now getting could have been alleviated. When a thinking piece posed an interesting question or conceit, it was for thought, a bit of discussion, and was supposed to get the attention of those who discovered it. A mind-twister. When an action-horror piece, badly done, posed an interesting question or conceit, it was no longer of interest, but just conceited and in the way of the action. It made the movie preachy and did not propose thought on those who viewed it, but explained its premise with ham-fisted drunkenness, and became a laugh.

If a wizened hermit on the mount said man lived in but infancy throughout the whole of life, there was an entirely different meaning to be gained than if the village idiot said, "People are big babies." The reputation of a statement, and its connotations, were invested in the speaker and presentation of the idea.

There was a surge of religious groups that had seen the film as an affront to their beliefs, as the first arrow shot in a particular sort of battle against faith. Why they had not argued over evolution in films in previous decades seemed mysterious. Something about the new times had caused everyone to feel a little fire, he supposed. These riled-up religious groups were answering what they thought to be his initial assault with their own volley, throwing stones at him in the newspapers and all over the radio, nodding to one another with a feigned aplomb. They charged that he hated God. They used his name as proof against Unitarianism, and later, after some scrutiny of several of his _Other Side_ episodes, as a cant against atheism. The more radical of these organizations and individuals began trying to connect him with other things they despised, openly suspecting he was in league with communists due to his support of evolution (a word they often used as code for godlessness), and alleging he was a homosexual. When they grew angry over the course of an interview or letter-to-the-editor, they resorted to the ugly words: Fraud. Apostate. Three-letter man. Pinko.

With these skirmishes against him, there was no battle, to Emery. He had simply written a movie that was, for the most part, a prolonged _Other Side_ tale, one that had been desiccated by the studio, several work-for-hire writers, and then flung up shortly on a screen with the popular, giddy utilization of an action plot and a chesty star. It was only a movie, and a flop, at that. Somehow, it had caused outrage among those most bristly in their religions. The words they used could hurt him far more than sticks and stones. Emery was unemployed and trying to convince the powers on high that his dozens of awards for writing and his two popular shows meant he could, in fact, write well. As for controversy over _The Passing of the Hand_ , that sort of attention usually bred greater celebrity, did it not? The networks were unconvinced.

All the doors seemed to have been locked. When he had first started down the ski-jump into television, he had possessed the fortune of being unknown, which meant he could have contained some hidden spark of ability just waiting to be discovered. Now, he had been discovered and his tricks had been watched and his presence had been digested. Emery Asher's score was in, and he had inadvertently upset a few judges, and many more viewers. The individuals and groups approached quietly, when he wasn't looking, but then blared loudly to all who would listen. The conundrum was that these drumbeaters judged him inconsequent and yet were still unwilling to leave him alone.

Emery was trying to stay involved, to be sequent, to keep a damn job, but he was constantly harangued by those passing crabs that sought to pick at his skin. They scuttled about him with claws and heads raised, thinking in some way that there was a sort of game afoot. There was not. His respect for the organization of America's various religions was sound. He thought faith in the supreme was a beautiful and monumental thing that had nurtured civilization like nothing else could.

"God's watching you, queer."

Emery had now been pushed away from a special in which he was to narrate the biography of Philo Farnsworth, disputed inventor of the television. An hour long, this would have also served quite well as a special on the rise of television, a subject for which Emery held a strong interest and professional affiliation, and meeting the aged Mr. Farnsworth would have been a wondrous perk to taking the job. This was no longer being offered to Emery, but to another voice actor, though Emery had been paid somewhat handsomely for the contract's dissolution.

The money was needed and taken, but the affront was manifest: Television, his mode of operation for the past decade, now seemed to think him too much of a contention to be seen in connection with its history. He had been given more of its writing awards than almost anyone, yet was now locked in the cellar so as not to embarrass the network when company came over.

It was while reading another lecture request that the phone rang and he rushed to answer. This expedience was not in anticipation of work. The year had been a macabre descent into horror for Larry. He was as if ninety years in age, utterly senile and unable to format a straight thought, or recognize anyone, including himself. The dreaded thing was so close.

Emery and Beth had spent many nights with the Belmonts over the course of the year, and at first, these were nearly medicinal, a great boost to Larry's cheer, and there had been much fun, if awkward in its nature. Even the stopping-by of Orson Banry at Larry's home several months back had been made with no ill-will or problem. Emery had stood beside the novelist and they had discussed the changes in doctor synopsis. There had been a new hope in a changed diagnosis, and two doctors had collaborated on series of procedures and medications they felt would keep Larry from debilitating further. This fell apart quickly, however. After this, Larry changed fast. The final diagnosis was again about time-frame, not disorder, and contained no hope.

The degeneration of Larry's mind had caused Emery's visits to become tragic affairs, and it was with much regret that Emery and Beth decided to cease their visits with him. It was simply too much to bear. Beth could not cry anymore and Emery was so horrified by the physical twisting and annihilation of his young friend that he had begun having recurring nightmares of this same ailment coming for him, for Beth, William, or the girls. They were worse than even those awful dreams of the war. The war dreams nearly seemed a sort of companion anymore, but the few nightmares he had conjured regarding Larry were almost debilitating.

Beth walked into the living room and watched as Emery lifted the receiver. An update that morning had given them the news that today would likely be the end of Larry's suffering. Such a thing would be a magnanimous gift, most felt. Emery was devastated by the notion that young Larry Belmont, the fiery young man with all the ideas who Emery had worked closely with but four years back, was now the withered husk of a thirty-eight year old codger. Larry had become an angry, addled spewer of nonsense and hatred, a twisted soul that wracked his back against the bed and shouted obscenities in his confusion and pain. He shouted about his mother and called her a whore. He repeated things like "Don't touch the little girl! She fucks like a boy!" with a disturbed smile. He no longer spoke about sailing and he no longer thought about writing. He said terrible things during brief outbursts of anguish. The doctors had been wrong about Larry dying without pain. Quite wrong.

"Hello?" Emery inquired. He gave a nod at Beth then, after hearing a short response, indicating the call was from who they had expected.

"Yes, of course. I'll get her," he said, turning to Beth, "She wants to talk to you."

Beth took the receiver.

"Helen?"

There was a moment of closed eyes and Emery sighed, glanced out the window into the street before his house.

"All right... I see. I- Helen, if there's anything you need, you let us know. It's- I mean that. Anything. Don't hesitate at all."

Rebecca was showing Vivian a few of her cheers on the front lawn. She was not yet a cheerleader, but hoped to be. Vivian saw her father through the window and waved. He gave his best impersonation of a smiling dad and drifted back into the world within the house.

"I am so sorry. I am truly sorry," Beth muttered, her voice containing the ache of something near to surfacing. She had covered her mouth with her hand, an automatic reaction. There was a pause as she listened. Emery heard a brief trill from the phone, across the room, and knew it was Helen weeping on the other end. She would be standing in their bedroom, beside sweet Larry, her husband who was now dead after several years of nature's most sinister side. It had changed the both of them in nearly every way, and the Helen that now lived in the Belmont house was not the person Emery had once met over daiquiris and Monopoly. That woman, like her husband, had ceased to exist. Beth lifted her head and blinked her eyes slowly.

"Oh, a much better place," she quietly said.

The call ended and Beth set the phone in its cradle. Emery's eyes reached over to his wife like a child's arms from a bassinet.

"Okay," he said, walking over and putting his arms around her. She hugged him and clenched her jaw, head thick and knees weak. They had known this moment would come, for almost a year, and both felt that Larry Belmont, the actual man, had been lost months ago. The news of this passing, however, something that had begun to feel like an almost scheduled event, had somehow crept into this hour and, despite their present dread, found them somehow unguarded. The couple had been well-prepared and yet not prepared at all for what struck them, quietly through the heart, a sharp nail through velvet. Beth's hair fell against his cheek and he caught his breath.

"...damn it..." he mumbled.

"There's finally some mercy for him," she said, throat constricted.

"Oh, Larry... thank god."

**Chapter Thirty-Four**

The man had a brother. He had an uncle. This was news. In the eight years for which Emery had known Larry Belmont, the deceased had never once mentioned an extended family. The young writer's family had been his wife, Helen. His family had been Moffat, Asher, Collery, and even Banry, writers and friends in the industry by which he worked. That he had a family was assumed, as it was for anyone, but there had never been a word about it. Larry's uncle said very little, though his brother, Jones, was quite talkative and had no trouble speaking candidly about Larry's childhood, which participants of the funeral would soon find to be unsettling and abnormal.

Helen had become approachable and kind to the Ashers, though she had always been a bit cantankerous when it came to gaining time with her husband, something that Emery found to be delightful and necessary. There had been a kinship between Helen and Beth, but this had surpassed the general notion of 'the wives', and both men had found themselves a part of this kinship. They had been four people that enjoyed one another's company, not simply the two men and the two women. Now, this four had become three, and perhaps less, and the occasion was a somber one. The arrival of Larry's family changed this in a shocking way, because these two individuals had not only debuted at a funeral, but were speaking about Larry, telling stories from his childhood. Helen was quite surprised by the intrusion of Larry's family into the funeral. It was only through a brief discussion with Helen that Emery would come to understand the peculiarity of their presence; Helen had known about Larry's family but had never met them, and Larry had despised them.

The oddity began when Jones Nutts, Larry's brother, began relating stories on Larry's childhood, which did not, it came out, contain a boy named Lawrence. Emery found this of friendly interest, but after a short while, the stories became horrid curiosities. One facet of Larry's family is that they _only_ had stories about his childhood, and nothing past puberty. Emery soon discovered this was due to Larry having escaped his family after high school, falsifying his way into the military at 16 and, when his three years of service were complete, moving to Los Angeles, with nary a look back. He had even changed his name to avoid his family, or anyone he grew up with, from ever finding him. Larry's last name was not, in truth, Belmont, and his first name was not Lawrence. The man with whom Emery had associated and quickly bonded had a somewhat secret past, one that went beyond the ordinary and bespoke a stream of events that could rival any _Other Side_ tale. Larry's birth name had not been Belmont, but Nutts, and while his birth certificate specified Lawrence as a first name, his mother considered him having been born Evelyn.

The struggle this child had undergone in his formative years went far beyond having an unfortunate last name. His mother, Letty, who Emery learned had passed away seven years prior, had considered her son a daughter at birth. She had then dressed Larry in girl clothing and had him attend school as a female, under the name Evelyn, until the fifth grade. The small, mountain town had no knowledge of Larry's actual gender. To them, Evelyn Nutts was a bit precocious, but a well-meaning girl with boyish interests.

Larry's older brother, Jones, having moved out when Larry was quite young, told Emery a harrowing story about how Letty would threaten Larry. She often stated that she would to kill Larry's dog if word ever got out that he was not a girl. Larry had lived his earliest social years as a female, masquerading in another gender and under a female name, in order to keep his own mother from cutting his beloved dog's throat. The surname Nutts, however unfortunate it may have been for Larry, was quite fitting for his mother. Where was his father during this bizarre ruse of gender? Dead in an automobile collision. This had occurred three months before Larry's birth. The man had left his young and disturbed wife with a five-year old son and a three-months-along surprise in a bit of genetic material that stubbornly would prove not to be the gender his mad wife preferred. Aside from these things, the man had left Letty with an unfortunate surname, a few love letters, and a Scottish terrier puppy named Yankee.

Larry had been a bright young girl, good with history and English but bad at socializing, a bit of a swift thief in a few candy store heists, an ardent enthusiast of his terrier's companionship, and somewhat of a tomboy who, at the age of ten, proved to be an actual boy. One afternoon, Larry found a box in the attic while trying to patch up a hole that had formed in the roof. The box contained some clothing from his older brother's elementary school days. Larry had hidden an outfit of these boy clothes in the mailbox one night, and, after leaving the house for school in the morning, he fetched them, hiding these in a bag. Once at school, Larry entered the little girls' room, changed, and when ready, exited the bathroom as a boy, forever ridding himself of being Evelyn. Yankee had died the week previous. Natural causes. Letty had become tyrannical in order to continue reigning Larry in, to keep a daughter, which the mother thought was a manner of protecting the young girl from becoming a boy. Letty could not keep up the pressure, however, and Evelyn soon became Lawrence, as was printed on his birth certificate.

The local newspaper had apparently run amok with the story, though due to the somewhat secluded nature of the small, Appalachian town, Letty was allowed to keep her young son. She punished him relentlessly, but not so much as his fellow schoolmates did. The beatings, according to Jones, were brutal in scope and happened often. This resulted in something else that Emery was surprised to hear: Larry had fake teeth, which he had been using since the eleventh grade, after a particularly bad fight got the better of him and some stomping had occurred.

Larry had not only died in a mind-ingesting, grisly fashion, but it seemed now he had also been raised in a similar one. Helen had known about the fake teeth, of course, and about the childhood, it came out, and she detested the Nutts family for damaging her husband in such a way. Helen had been keeping it in her mind that if she were ever to meet Letty Nutts, she would likely run the woman down with a car, and even voiced this aloud to Beth near the end of the funeral. It was to Helen's satisfaction when Jones explained that Letty had been dead for many years. Helen knew about the change from Evelyn to Larry, and the later, legal change in name from Lawrence Nutts to Lawrence Belmont. She knew the whole story and had kept all of it secret, as if the childhood were her own, and surely at her husband's behest. Emery tried to focus and keep his mind on remembering Larry, on performing the correct function of a funeral, but this sudden influx of bizarre news and revelation had given the funeral the feel of a grotesque carnival. They were all in one of Larry's stories, it seemed, but one that sadly functioned as non-fiction.

How different Larry now seemed to Emery, how unique and disciplined and even triumphant. The man had kept something so strongly personal, so overwhelmingly odd and terrible, to himself, telling no one but his wife, taking it even to the grave with him... that form of resolve was a thing Emery respected greatly, and he felt that he, himself, could never possess the strength for such a thing.

According to Helen, who had not prepared to be so revealing and candid at the funeral, Belmont was the name of a villain in a comic book Larry had stolen in junior high. He had tried playing football with the other kids, but they were not accepting of him, and he began wanting to be someone else. Not Evelyn, not Lawrence Nutts. Someone with a fresh start and no connection to the past troubles he had experienced. He dropped out of high school in his sophomore year and ran away. The manner by which his mother clung to him and the bizarre environment in which he was raised in the isolated mountains precluded he stay forever with his family.

"He said he would have rather been dead. I think he would have, too," Helen said.

Larry planned his escape with much detail, concocting a few fake documents, and then snuck off in the middle of the night. He had been made to feel like a small, ignorant child, even into his teenage years, and while the threats had ceased working on him, his mother's crying had begun, something Larry had fallen prone to with ease. In the end, with both resolve and panic guiding him, Larry gathered up a few belongings and left under moonlight, making a slow, hitchhiking adventure across three states. When he entered Louisiana, he was exhausted and hungry, and not wanting to beg, Larry sought out the nearest recruiting station and joined the military at sixteen-years old. He did so with a handful of fake papers that exhibited, for the first time in print, the name of Lawrence Belmont. This had been his last resort, and he had planned on the possibility of having to join the ARMY.

After three years of uneventful service in the late 1940's, which saw him writing a great many stories in his spare time, Larry Belmont exited the military and moved to Los Angeles. That same year, he was published in the inaugural issue of _Playboy_. This was where Larry's past life met with the life Emery had known.

Larry's absence had wreaked a quiet havoc on his family back home. Letty had panicked when her son/daughter did not come home, and, after two days, she sent Jones on the mission to find his missing sibling. The older brother had gone looking for him, numerous times over the course of a year, and did suspect the young man had entered the service, but there was no record of enlistment for either Lawrence or Evelyn Nutts. Neither Letty nor Jones would ever see Larry again. Jones' presence at the funeral, with his uncle, was due to a guilt-heavy and likely turmoil-induced clause in Larry's last will and testament, which had guided Larry's attorney to search out and contact Letty and Jones Nutts. One would prove to be no longer with the living.

Emery knew the rest of Larry's story, somewhat. After the ARMY, Larry began publishing his stories while going to school on the G.I. Bill, and when Larry left school, without graduating, he already had a decent career free-lancing. Emery and Larry had a similar start in the television business, with the exception that Emery had helped to create certain aspects of the television programming world, having joined into it when television was quite young, while Larry had enlisted in television once the ball was rolling. It was a newly established career that Larry had taken up, one that could be read about, asked about, but with Emery, the rise into the world of television had been an unmitigated field of the unknown. One sort of person had paved the way for another, and with only a handful of years separating them. As the funeral bore on, Emery found himself thinking over certain aspects of Larry's personality, and specific instances in the past that might have alluded to such a troubled childhood. Some of the awful outbursts, near the end, when Larry was no longer Larry, had contained ample hints.

Don't touch the little girl! She fucks like a boy!

Emery thought back on a story Larry had pitched during the second season of _The Other Side_ , one in which a young man living in a world where homosexuality was enforced by law falls in love with a young woman, and is subsequently caught, beaten, and jailed for having an affair with her. Emery now wondered with direction whether that story, as well as several other gender-themed tales Larry had concocted over the years, had been based on true, inner turmoil and the harking back of his mind to childhood. Emery had thought these stories wondrous and imaginative tales, ground-breaking scripts and themes, but now knew they had flowed from a particular fountain that resided deep in Larry's disturbing past.

FADE TO:

Exterior, the MOON. We see a ninety-year old LARRY BELMONT in a C.U., standing alone on the desolate, gray surface. There is no sound, no wind, just ominous stillness. LARRY looks slowly about, seeming lost, as we PULL BACK to a distant shot, showing the isolated nature of his location.

CUT TO:

CLOSE UP of LARRY again. He looks down and we follow his stare. In the dust near his feet extrudes a set of typewriter keys, out of order, in varying heights within a few inches of the ground. LARRY kneels and starts hunt-and-peck typing on the disarrayed keys. Still silent, we see him tiredly look upward then.

We CUT TO a wide angle shot of Earth in the black of space. We see this for a few seconds before the Earth begins to go dark.

In slow-motion, We CUT TO LARRY as he turns his head and looks out of frame at another object. We stay in slow-motion for the remainder of the scene.

Larry's face grows dim and we CUT TO a wide angle shot of THE SUN. The brightness and vivid color begin fading however. We watch as the Sun goes out, cutting back and forth between Larry on the moon and the Sun as it all grows dark. Over several of these quick shots, LARRY transforms into a little girl in a light-blue dress. She lies down and begins making a snow-angel in the moondust. The scene continues darkening and we CUT finally back to the Earth. We see it slowly vanish in the ever-dimming light. After a moment, in the pitch black, we hear what sounds like an interview fading in. When it reaches normal volume, we hear the voices of CALVIN MOFFAT and his interviewer, WYATT MANN.

WYATT MANN:

When did you first start to realize that Lawrence Belmont was sick, with his changing behavior and illness?

CALVIN MOFFAT:

Oh, it was slow at first. He was forgetting things and being flighty, but I always thought he was just hitting the bottle too hard and it was taking a toll. We were collaborating then, and he did drink a lot. The first time I realized something else was happening was when we got together one afternoon and I remember thinking he looked older than me. Which was very new, and I asked him if he was okay and he just told me he was hungover. I bought that, but it kept happening. He was in a hospital for it, maybe a few weeks later.

As we listen to the audio of the interview, small amounts of gray fade in at the edge of the black frame.

WYATT MANN:

What did they think of his illness?

CALVIN MOFFAT:

Well, they had no idea. Larry was ill and after a few months, they thought it was Alzheimer's. Then it was Pick's disease. There were a couple others they were checking on but they never came back with anything. Larry thought they were ignoring his calls for awhile, there. I think they were stumped. But then he was back in the hospital and his skin started to go, and he was forgetting all sorts of things. Weird things, and everyone knew there was something very wrong with Larry, then.

As the interview progresses, we pull back from the black to reveal we've been looking into a grammatical period mark on a manuscript.

WYATT MANN:

If you could pick a few favorites from Larry's work, what stands out to you most?

CALVIN MOFFAT:

I recall Larry coming over in... probably February of 1960, after a day on the set of Other Side, second season, and giving me a copy of "The List of the Bow". I was stunned by how good it was. Larry had a soft spot for immigration... like the plight of coming here, I mean, and the way he captured the uncertainty of the occupants of that boat just shocked me. He knew a lot about boats, too. For a couple of minutes there, I felt like I'd just made the trip over, myself.

WYATT MANN:

And that story was the first ever piece of fiction to appear in Modern Gentleman, when they started collecting. Was there ever any rivalry between you two or with other writers you knew?

We've pulled back enough to see several typed words. They are not indicative of anything, just the end of a random sentence.

CALVIN MOFFAT:

With me? Not at all. We wrote together quite a few times. Other writers usually liked Larry a lot. He and Asher used to play a kind of fake rivalry, maybe. Only a little and it was all for fun. But I wanted to say, that story you mentioned wasn't actually the first one in Modern Gentleman.

WYATT MANN:

No?

CALVIN MOFFAT:

No, the first Modern Gentleman story was another one of Larry's. "Within a Forest Dark". Title was a line from Dante, and they printed it a few years earlier, but you're right that "The List of the Bow" made it in there, too. Just later. Larry was the very first to be printed in Modern Gentleman. And he was in there a few times. Mostly he did articles they contracted for him. He had a love of sailing. I never saw him sail, but I know he was keen to get out on the water every month or so. His articles were usually about that.

We can now see several lines of text, crooked in frame.

WYATT MANN:

Having read many of his early stories, as well as many early works of all the Other Side writers, you and Emery Asher, and Joe Collery (who has an excellent short story collection, I think), but I read Larry Belmont's early stories and I've always been really taken aback by the unsavoriness Larry Belmont could work with. Very subversive work, especially since many of them were written in the Red Panic and the conformist gestalt of ten years ago. All of that was in high gear but he didn't seem to abide by it much.

CALVIN MOFFAT:

Most of us ignored all that. We had to. It was bizarre and ignorant.

WYATT MANN:

I remember reading "After Supper", where this cold-hearted father forces his little girl to live as a boy. And it was amazing. Another Playboy story, "You are Here, Mr. Steadman", was surprisingly affecting, too, because he has this sex bar in the future that's only for homosexuals, and homosexuality is the way the world has become in that future, and heterosexuality is banned as aberrant and perverted there. Larry Belmont detailed that with a lot of intricacy and it's a really out-there story. Did he always have that in mind, being subversive, or-

CALVIN MOFFAT:

Not really, no.

WYATT MANN:

...or else maybe just trying to get to a favored taboo or out-there place when he wrote?

We can see the majority of a paragraph now, full of details and lines, some smudges in places, and dried correction fluid beneath certain phrases. We also see some handwritten notes and a few scratched out words. Editing.

CALVIN MOFFAT:

No, people think that but Larry was one of the most grounded writers I knew, and he wrote many things. The more risque stories got the attention, but he wrote other things, too. He was very level unless he had a couple of drinks in him. Larry's energy and his wilder side came out after that. He'd get adventurous and want to go do things, see things... sail. He was eager then. And his accent would come out a little.

WYATT MANN:

Did any of the Other Side writers ever go sailing with him?

CALVIN:

No, I don't think so. Banry did, I think, once.

WYATT MANN:

Did Larry and Orson Banry spend much time together?

CALVIN MOFFAT:

Not outside the Orange Grove. Once or twice, they might have met somewhere, but with other writers from the group, too. Larry was sort of the black sheep of those people after the second season of Other Side.

WYATT MANN:

Because of his involvement with Emery Asher and the "I Sing of Arms and a Man" script. Do you think Banry saw a lot of talent in Larry?

We can see most of the page at hand. It is full of revision marks, whiteout, smudged ink, and a stain on the upper corner. We do not get to see the entire page, just the disjointed nature of partial text and one edge of the paper.

CALVIN MOFFAT:

Sure. Of course. Larry's talent was easy to spot.

WYATT MAN:

I think what strikes me the most was that, at a young age, he seemed to be able to put forth these fascinating tales that just aren't like the other writers of the time. They're unique and touching stories, in his own way, and I think they're not afraid to speak intimately to readers.

We see smoke start to drift over the page, likely from a cigarette just out of frame.

WYATT MANN (CONT.):

There are all these dark stories, and he was rewriting the roles people play, featuring homosexuality, and toying with what gender means or- or just is. Really amazing work. I can't stress that enough.

CALVIN MOFFAT:

Yes, Larry wrote some excellent fiction.

CUT TO:

Non-fiction. Parker Funeral Chapel. A service. There were several per day. As the cloud cover moved across the sky, the morning occasioned to brightly saturate the grass and trees beside the chapel, and these short stunts of sunlight and clarity lifted the bereft mood of the chapel's occupants.

At the behest of both Emery and Calvin, Helen agreed not confront the brother, Jones, or the uncle, who had not given his name, for being present at the funeral. To many, including Helen and Beth, having not been a part of Larry's adult life meant that Jones and this silent uncle should neither be a part of his death. Emery and Calvin, however, seeking to avoid a scene, convinced Helen to say nothing. Emery conceded that at a funeral, even one's enemies were somewhat welcome, if their purpose was to say goodbye in a sincere and respectful manner. This was the tragic stipend of having lived, and Larry would not have had his brother sought out and invited if he did not want his brother to attend. Perhaps this was Larry's way of letting those he cared for learn about his past, allowing them to discover the truth of his life.

Jones did seem upset, but the sort that bore more confusion than distress. He was out of his element and felt his purpose was to be candid about Larry's past, and explain things to those present. He was furtive when spoken to, and was not used to the sort of people Los Angeles fostered. It was obvious he did not feel welcome. This was somewhat correct. Most felt, after hearing the stories of Larry's childhood, that no one from Larry's early family should have been allowed to stay at the funeral. Why had Jones not intervened with his mother? The answer to this was likely the same as the answer to why Larry had changed his name and run away in the night: Escape. Who knows what odd things Jones had undergone as a child. He wasn't speaking about it. He was speaking only about Larry. This may have been indicative that the madness of Letty had been far-reaching and devastating in a variety of ways. In Jones' youth, there was a father present, as well. Had this man, dead before Larry's birth, served to monitor and balance Letty's behavior, or had the husband compelled it?

Larry's uncle said nothing, even when asked a direct question. This was Letty's brother. The old man was somber and quiet and breathed loudly through his nostrils when approached for conversation. He was hidden and judgemental, looked quietly ornery, and was most certainly not a metropolitan sort of being. A closed-mouth, nasal sigh was his response to questioning. His old eyes demonstrated a sort of regret, yes, but also a strange sort of zeal, possibly that sort of rare individual who enjoyed grief, who felt most alive when given a reason to be stricken with sadness. He was the sort of person that the popular term 'hillbilly' described. He had dressed in a fair suit, but it did not fit him much and his mannerisms and posture, his face and general standing, was out of place. The uncle's eyes relayed a near manic sense of being elsewhere, a different world for which none present beyond Jones and the deceased might understand. Emery could see the resemblance to Larry, especially in the Uncle's eyes, though other resemblance was slight. Jones, however, was a perfect match for Larry's ears and chin.

The Nutts were a mountain family that had a long history and a resilient kinship, until a member escaped. Once that happened, the deserter was considered to have abandoned the family, a traitor and renegade, and was then never spoken of, as had happened with Larry. Emery found it horrifying that Larry might be considered the ne'er-mention of his family, a disgrace, when Larry had so clearly survived its condition expertly, having fostered an amazing career and a potent, though short, life. Larry's family must have seemed as if captors to him. The uncle was nearly one of Larry's brooding, plotting characters come to life.

There was an attempt at cordiality. Emery was not so sad when talking over the goodness of his friend's life, so long as he could keep this going. The wake became a place of chatter, and Emery tried to strike up a conversation, at one point, with the uncle, as many had attempted that day. Emery approached and, after a brief greeting, mentioned the shared career he and Larry had fostered together. The point was to introduce Larry's great success, to describe for this unavailable family member the lengths to which one might be proud of Larry, and how far Larry had come, what he had accomplished. Perhaps the uncle would take this news back home, tell any other family members, and let it be known that Larry had been a young man for whom they might take pride. The uncle, however, made his resolve quite clear with a grunt and lack of eye-contact: _Leave me alone._

And so Larry Belmont, the imaginative and unique writer of dark tales, who had survived an imaginative and uniquely dark childhood, and who then had an equally surprising, twist-ending of a funeral, after an imaginative and darkly unique death, was buried before all present. He had a closed casket, per Helen's request. Anyone would have made the same request. Helen spoke much with friends, but did not speak in an official capacity at the funeral, owing to her nervousness and grief. She stayed always near Beth or Calvin, and spoke to Emery much, seeing the friends as more the relatives of Larry than those other present.

She talked about Larry's appearance, the nightmare that the past two years had fostered in her. Larry had died at the young age of thirty-eight, and his ninety-year old appearance had horrified her. She felt incredibly guilty for trying to stay away from him in the last weeks, for keeping to herself in the living room and attempting to visit what she referred to as Larry's room as little as she could. This had been his study, which they had converted into a makeshift sick room. She had fed her husband, of course, and cleaned him, and there were moments when she entered the room in the middle of the night and watched him sleep, praying that some sort of relief might come, either in remission or, in her quieter thoughts, passing.

Beth knew that Helen would need her friends for a time after the funeral, to help her go on and re-acquaint her with the world. Larry's illness had become all Helen thought about, and she was now widowed with those thoughts. It had scarred her deep in as a thing could. Emery understood this. His nightmares about the war still continued to eat at him in the late hours, and would likely never abate. Helen's troubles were only over in one sense. The brunt of the emotional shocks she had been subjected to would only continue to reach out for her. The funeral and wake were but signposts, large ones, in the map of a particular life's sorrow, and these were the only elements of Larry's passing by which she would have company. Emery and Beth kept near to her, and promised one another they would continue to do this in the months to come. Beth was keeping herself together and remaining a support beam for Helen during the trying funeral, but had a definite view on the matter of Larry's relatives.

"I can't stand to look at them. I wish someone would chase them out," Beth said.

Calvin Moffat had grown close to Larry over the past few years, and they had been loose acquaintances before _The Other Side_ had even been pitched. They had shared the same agent for the past seven years.

Calvin's character at the funeral seemed greatly troubled, but not so much in the usual way of funeral thoughts and somber occasion. He seemed more confused than grief-stricken. Perhaps Calvin Moffat was having difficulty understanding what had happened to Larry. The disease that took the younger writer's life was certainly one for building bafflement and grief. Calvin spoke little and tended to keep close to Emery. He did not have the look of a man who had recently lost a good friend, but rather, the look of a man who had just learned that he, himself, was dying.

Emery knew that Calvin and Larry had been collaborating on a screenplay for Universal, and that both of them had formed a sort-of work-friendship. Even on The Other Side, they had proven quite apt at looking out for one another and relating rumors of jobs and general television news. They had been cohorts, really, and having that severed was difficult for Calvin on a variety of levels, the worst of which was surely grief at having lost a close friend. Moffat had no wife to come home to, and no one to which he might relate his troubles. He was, by his own preference (and somewhat embellished), a lone gun. Emery needed to spend time with the man soon.

Calvin had planned to speak at the funeral, but after hearing some of the stories Jones Nutts had offered, felt his own speech was nonsense. What light anecdote could follow such a bizarre and rampantly surreal summary of a life? It had not only taken the wind from Calvin's sails, but troubled him greatly. His occasional glances at Emery and brief sparks of their conversation, more statements than talk, were not for comfort, but in disbelief. Calvin could not process the information he had received. It baffled about in his brain like an equation he was neither able to solve nor remove from his head. He had the look of a man who had recently been haunted and might lose quite a bit of sleep over it. Orson Banry spoke, shortly, and gave a kind and excellent synopsis of the original and talented man that had been Larry Belmont. When first out of the military, Larry had been so eager, and contacted Banry as a fan. What Banry had at first thought to be advising a young writer had quickly become a fellowship, and Larry had been invited into the Orange Grove writing group, which had been somewhat exclusive.

"I was talking to him one afternoon," Banry said, "oh, it was a sunny day in '52, and I mentioned our relationship using the word _wizard_ to describe myself, something he had called me a few times in the past. A joke between us. I somewhat considered Larry a kind of apprentice. So there we were, in my study. Smoking and beer. And when I said _wizard_ he stared at me and put his hand up, you know, 'stop right there', and with irritation, he said, 'Knock it off, Orson. We're peers now, you ass'. He was right, of course, and thankfully saw fit to inform me of my error." Banry spoke with mirth and finished quickly. He was quite upset but hid some of this, as was preferred in the society of a funeral.

Several days prior, Helen had asked Emery to speak, and he had agreed to do so. Emery had prepared a thing that he might say for a funeral, but more a thing that would serve as a goodbye to a dear friend. As with Calvin Moffat however, what Emery had written no longer felt so relevant. He stood before the gathering of friends and loved ones, the people Larry had escaped from and the people he had run to, and Emery kept only the end of the speech, beginning openly and with a straight approach. He improvised until he found a place to enter.

"I think it's fair to say there was much about our good friend we did not know, and many aspects of his life, especially his early life, that might have been kept secret for specific, and... well, for understandable reasons. I won't, and neither should any of you, resent or trouble over why he kept these things private. You would have done that. So would I. That we were allowed to know these things now, after his passing, is really a good indication as to how much Larry trusted us. He kept his secrets because he didn't want to change the way we looked at him, or felt about him. That he wanted us to know these things now, after his passing, shows that he always wanted us to know, just not while he might see our looks at him change. Self preservation. That's all, and I think we can all understand it, because that's something we all have in us. A lot of it, in fact. And I think Larry may have done more preserving of his self than just about anyone I've ever known."

CUT TO:

EMERY ASHER is giving his eulogy for LARRY. We see the viewing table and casket behind him, off left. As he continues speaking, we see the casket's lid budge (EMERY ASHER continues giving his eulogy during this scene). Atop the viewing table, the lid of the casket opens slowly and we see a LITTLE GIRL (around 7-years old in a summery dress, but a girl who still looks quite boyish) trying to get out. She awkwardly climbs out of the casket. After climbing down, her feet finally on the floor, she leaves the casket lid open. Turning to the funeral's participants, the LITTLE GIRL leans back against the casket and table it rests on. Nonchalant, she lights a cigarette and begins smoking, one foot crossed over the other and leaning back, listening in on the funereal speech.

We CUT TO EMERY ASHER again, still giving his improvised eulogy. We can see the LITTLE GIRL behind and off his left, smoking and listening. She seems a little bored.

CUT TO:

"The things we've heard today about Larry... this is a young man that fought for his identity harder than most of us can understand. Harder than I ever fought in a trench, and harder than even his struggle to become a writer. Most of us know who we are, and a lot of that begins in childhood. It's shaped by our parents and our friends, usually with the mode of helping us to fit in and understand our role. But it doesn't sound as if Larry had those things in his favor, and he had to make some mind-boggling decisions about who he was at an age when most of us were still writing our letters to Santa Claus."

"I am honored to have been his friend. You see, I loved Larry much, and I think we all did, and do, and he'll always have a great seat in our hearts. Front row, certainly. And knowing these things about his youth only strengthen my respect and admiration for him. I'm certain many of you will feel the same way. I think it's... important to know that his early life, which is eclipsed only by the sad fashion he left this world, is something... it's something so personal that we can't help but remember him in the strongest way. I think that's why he arranged us to hear these things today. To remember him well, to hold him in our hearts. And we most certainly will, won't we? His disheartening past, his fiery career, his greatness and well-meaning, and even the way he went at the end... I think he has very well orchestrated that no one here will ever, ever forget Larry Belmont."

There was a little laughter then, with a solitary few claps from the back of the funeral parlor that caught on, beginning a short round of light applause, something by which Emery was upset. Applause did not belong at a funeral. He slowed for a moment, out of place. The claps had caused him to remember he was a writer, and this brought him a spark of disgust for himself. A funeral was no place to do well. He was not, of course, but the feeling was there: Performance. He hated it. Emery decided to finish his impromptu speech by cutting to the end, a portion he had, indeed, written in the previous week. It was short and contained a quote.

"He was one of the most talented and loyal people I have ever known, and he developed his gift as both a professional and a wild-man. Let me say that while I am sorely remiss to have lost such a great friend to his inevitable end, I am thankful that this end came, and the fashion in which it happened is one I will celebrate as being merciful. Larry's passing, to me, will always be a compassionate finale to a wondrous life. Nothing changes that. Nothing at all."

A raised eyebrow from the uncle caused Emery to falter. He scanned about the room and saw Calvin looking distraught and deeply puzzled, still caught in the glare of what he had heard in the previous hour. Jones scratched at his temple and wore the glaze of noncommittal. The brother's job of being present and telling what there was to tell had been accomplished. There was only a small amount of loss in him for his little brother, it seemed. As Emery built in thought, he stuttered across the eyes of Helen. She was weeping quietly to herself in the front row, accompanied by her dismayed mother, and staring at the casket in which her husband had been set. Emery quickly averted and found Beth. Her nod caused his heart to start again.

"Uh, I'd... I'd like to offer a quote from Shakespeare, a writer that Larry and I discussed many times while more than excitably drunk and certainly full of ourselves, um, which many of you know we were often. It's from the soliloquy and goes like this: 'To die. To Sleep. No more. And by a sleep we say to end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.' Now, that quote is naturally well known, but it's true in this situation, and if he could hear it, I think he would find it apt. Even more apt, now, since having learned more about Larry's youth today, I can say with confidence he had more than the usual share of heartache, and I believe Larry definitely had out his thousand shocks, and then some. The thing is..."

Emery swallowed, his throat a baking pipe of weeds and itch. He had gone off-track. He just wanted to say more for Larry. After clearing his throat, he simply wandered aloud in his thoughts.

"...to tell you the truth... well, this is no usual man. Not at all. He bore through all of these troubles, and he did it on his own, and then with the help of his loving wife, Helen, and later, with his friends, and- he did it with so much life. It's inspiring and he was a hell of a man. I truly and deeply admire him. Just for a moment, I want to bid my good friend farewell, and thank the fates for my having been able to know him. For even a short time."

Emery turned his head and indicated the casket. There were no more words that would suffice, save the simplest.

"So long, Larry. It's over and you handled it perfectly."

**Chapter Thirty-Five**

Winter was inaugurated through damp limbs and a cold disposition, but beneath the clouds and deadened feel, a few warm winds could still come. Thanksgiving had been a slow and quiet event, owing to the circumstance of Belmont's passing and the unavailability of work, but in the following week, something positive finally began to happen. Emery had been contracted to write three short scripts, a half-hour each, that were to be placed in a row with a wraparound introduction and then aired on NBC as a one-time television movie. This project began immediately, and by Spring, the project was ready to be filmed.

The art of the television movie was no stranger to the airwaves, and Moffat had recently had some success with one, but it was the first time Emery had taken part in something longer than an hour for television. As with _The Other Side_ , a show that had undoubtedly paved the way for this particular project, he was to narrate and host the movie. The design was to use four appearances, one to introduce the first tale, another two to introduce the following tales, and a final closer monologue for all of them. There would be three different directors, one for each tale. The wrap-around would be shot by one of them, as well.

The film had a structure and shell that Emery had developed, something that might give an able-bodied presence to his past work, while reaching into a slightly new area as working theme: A museum. Rather than introduce his new tales as coming from the other side, or some such place, he now would exhibit an actual picture-frame that held an image from each story, something from the set or a frame from the opening. He would act as a curator to these tales, beginning with small exhibits that gave a short representation of what was to come. It wasn't wholly original, but functioned well and had those elements of his previous work people had come to expect. He hoped it would please all concerned, though had become a bit gun-shy about appearing on camera. Some of the negative things said after _The Passing of the Hand_ had been said directly to him, in person, because he was recognizable. Acting before a camera, after these personal encounters, and after having done so many commercials, now bothered him. He was only going before the cameras again because the contract for his television movie hinged upon his agreeing to do so.

He knew he had become a servant to demographic, one that now concocted his frames and subjects with those mannerisms to which the public seemed most receptive. It was a standard evolution in one's art: You splashed into being with a certain thing, and then were expected to repeat that thing, with occasional forays into other notions and formats, but overall, your public splash needed to be harked back on every so often. A few artists could surpass this and move into other territory, but Emery did not seem to be one of those lucky souls. He needed to follow his name and reputation, rather than to let these things follow him, for a time. The conceits and themes in his work were still his own, but he would now cater the details a bit, give the public something they were known to appreciate, at the outset. The younger Emery might have found this to be too unsteady a compromise, but that younger Emery had not been accustomed to failure. Negativity and the repugnance of being unwanted, or even forgotten entirely, was the sort of burdensome creature that resided always beside one's soft throat, and it terrified him.

The early portion of Spring was shot away by cameras. His creative control of the film kept him quite busy, yet even without recent practice, he found himself far less exhausted than he would have first surmised. This was not to last, however. He could write and appear on camera, but producing was what drained him most. Being a producer could overwhelm him quickly, and this exhaustion came on suddenly, hindering his writing and acting. He continued however, managing changes and keeping his rifle loaded, moving forward even when uncertain. It was a good project and paid well; he could rest when it was completed.

CUT TO:

We see EMERY in jeans and a t-shirt from the side in medium shot, standing on a set. He's holding several papers in his left hand and looking downstage. He steps forward, off the small shooting set, toward a very large camera. There is no one around. He is alone. We see him reach the camera and press his face into the lens.

C.U. FROM SIDE: EMERY and the camera lens. His mouth and nose are hidden by the rubber lens skirt. We can hear Emery whispering something to the machine. We draw closer until we can hear what is being said in this odd moment.

EMERY:

If you set me down to stand on my own, I- I have stronger feet where my eyes are fed, see... where I might find that less of you is more of you.

The camera makes a whirring sound then, something within it activating.

EMERY:

I know. You're enthralled— the deadening things are like nutrient for you. You just want to film the deadening things. So set me down; I don't care how hot it gets, I'll blink for shade. You know me, and even though it's spring outside it's autumn inside. How hackneyed, but true. And did you know that all my frost-bit stalks have abandoned their temerity, and they don't care? It's frost that holds there, even in the summer. It's true; I'll stay breathing, but be deadened for you, old man. Are we in agreement?

More whirring from the large camera.

EMERY:

Good. You should know that you'll never find me enthralled like that. Like you. Because the sky knells over each hour, half-regaining its blue stock, and because the floor is death's bitterest mulch. I'm like those things, right? Because I can release short pageants of peat, and you like to walk on that. So I'll do it, but I want to just stand here while that happens. My spring, where I had all that sovereign green laying out my suits... that's gone, and I will now always be receding, and drinking up the dizzy tips of air, because it's not in my nature to go away. Full measure. That's how a man lives. He lives full measure.

We see and hear EMERY kiss the camera lens before letting go of it. He slowly walks back onto the shooting set. EMERY turns and we see him from the viewpoint of the camera to which he has just spoken. He is in a medium shot, centered in frame, looking as if he's about to start up a narration for an episode. There is a slight spot of blur to the scene due to Emery's kiss making a smudge.

EMERY:

(with a little anger)

I know, I lost my mind. Fine, it's lost. So what? I'm still on, sometimes, and I still have a typewriter. Well, I'll fail; watch. Go ahead, set me down here and watch me vanish, without any invention, neither brisk nor primitive, and just watch me deaden, some pointless pulse in the unsettled scene of any unwritten act. Because that's where you don't live, in story. You're not there; you're elsewhere and you're _always_ on.

We see him reach into a pocket and get his pack of cigarettes. He lights one, returns the pack and his lighter to his pocket. After a drag, he seems more settled, more relaxed. The smoke drifts about his head, rising up out of frame. He addresses us.

EMERY:

This doesn't cost you anything. It costs me a lot.

CROSSFADE TO:

The flicker of a screen. A television activated. Comedy. Commercial. Drama. Winter's end had brought the beginning of outer greenery, and when the film project was complete, _The After Hours_ met the public in the late spring, in the rebirth time of things beyond windows. The movie was placed on the air in a cordial way. Emery had worked hard, and _The After Hours_ had reached the screen. There he was, in private homes again. The style of the movie looked to be partitioned in his past, but was presented in color with new, sharp cameras, which he felt gave his complexion a bit of a burned, intricate pallor. He had been assured by the director that this was not the case, but there it was on the screen: He looked crackly and muddy in a way, not as watchable. He seemed overly tanned and his hair had no shine.

Beth sat beside him on the couch as they watched the program in vivid color. Their bowl of popcorn sat between them while Vivian finished homework at the kitchen table. Rebecca, who had gone out for the evening, odd beads in her hair and an attitude of near complete disregard, was doing whatever it was she did when in the company of those two other girls from school. Vivian was doing well enough in school, but Rebecca had become a somewhat mouthy iconoclast, having fostered silly replacements for the things she supposedly saw through. Unlike her friends, she did seem to hold much respect for her parents, but even this felt to be on the wane. The world had become colorful and the gods on high had seen fit to turn society's contrast all the way up. The whole of the juvenile world seemed to be going awry, in a way that was dismaying, yet also somewhat relieving. Perhaps things would change once the dust settled. Perhaps a touch of fairness might enter the world. This did not seem likely, and for every interesting thing of which Emery caught wind, there were other, problematic things encroaching on it.

Television was somewhat the same as it had ever been, but for a short, renewed time, it felt to Emery as if the outset of an excellent date. He was forty-four years old, the decade was nearing an end, all new shows were broadcast in color, he had money coming in, and everyone was paying attention to everything. There was a war on in Southeast Asia and an American draft had been set into motion for some time. The sort of service young men would be taken into was a world that Emery knew much about and was staunchly against.

The decade had given him, and much of the nation, much in the way of negativity, but his career now seemed to have survived its funeral, and while people he had known in the past were no longer living, others had been born anew. The gears continued turning and a toothsome wildness had infiltrated the culture. Never in Emery's life had he encountered such a gap between the views of two generations. It was a volatile gap and everyone on either side had a great many opinions on the other.

Rebecca and her misguided, crusader cohorts seemed a somewhat innocent bunch, though ill-conceived by their own, highly fashionable disregard for the fashionable. He had a new show that was an old sort of show, and on a new network that felt like an old network. People were less interested, considering the volatile state of the country and the war abroad, and so Emery had thrown every bit of himself into his project with the hope that what Victor Horowitz, a network executive, had proposed would be true: A show that would use Emery's television movie as a diving board. If these three segments and their pejorative wrap-around were enjoyed by the public enough, it would become a weekly program. This, in effect, made the hour-and-a-half movie an extended pilot, unbeknownst to the general viewers. Emery knew that nearly everything in television happened unbeknownst to viewers.

His name had been flushed down the toilet on the bulky mess that _The Passing of the Hand_ had become, and the termination of _The Deserter_ had caused a wavering network to conclude, finally and certainly, that he would always be more trouble than he was worth. These troubles, and the greater presence of news programs on the air, in collaboration with his diminished favor with the public and a nation divided in its views on nearly everything, had made him virtually unemployable.

NBC was taking a risk in putting him on the air. At first, they had opted not to have him introduce the segments, and had hired the aged Jack Griss to serve this purpose, which was acceptable to Emery. After Griss backed out of the project, however, the network allowed a risk and put Emery before the camera. To Emery, once the notion had set in, this could be a way of revalidating himself and his image for the public. A manner of appeal.

"That was very smooth," Beth said, beside him on the couch.

"Thank you. I looked okay?" He did not like his color appearance. She did, however.

"You look handsome, but I'm not sure I like the cut of the suit."

"Ah. It was the lesser of evils. The other two suits were ugly on me."

The opening of the movie had run itself through and the first of the three stories had begun. His introduction for this first tale had been given the most revision, and he had chored over it with a sensation very close to obsession. It had to be perfect. It had to serve as a doorway to let the public know he was still worth their attention. He knew he was skilled, as did other writers and the networks, but convincing the public of this long enough to play a show before them was a daunting hill-climb in some very bad weather. His earlier work, no matter how awarded or known, may as well have never happened.

Bennie Mink's comedy show had finally been cancelled, but was immediately picked up by CBS, and Mink's first new episode for Emery's old network was one in which the aged comedian poked much fun at _The Passing of the Hand,_ and even a few episodes of _The Other Side._ Evolution jokes. Alien gags. Slapstick in rubber suits. Even the credit animations had been parodied. Bennie Mink, playing his usual bumbling character, got into a costume resembling an ape, at one point, and played out a weird fantasy of being one that would do anything for a banana, and then seeming nearly to go mad upon witnessing a paper airplane. Near the end of the skit, Mink was still in ape costume, waiting in a long line to get into the Statue of Liberty tour. It was low and bothersome humor, and half of the skits in the episode were digressive jabs at Emery and his past productions. The program had ended with Mink giving a parody monologue (in hoots and grunts) while still in the ape costume. That CBS had allowed this was one thing, but Emery suspected they might have encouraged it. After all, Emery working for another network might become competition for CBS. Emery had in his mind a scene wherein he was able to meet with Mink and subsequently black one of the slapstick-hawking, goofy-faced buffoon's eyes for him.

Emery had grown accustomed to the heckling, in so much as it did not disturb him to the extent it once had. He was still recognized, but a cultural sort of fad had developed that included a slight disdain for anyone successful in the media. The kids were doing this, but their parents were flaring it on, and had botched so much of the industry that many of the popular shows were now base and without wit. A great watering down had begun; similar to what had happened with Hollywood in decades past. There were noticeable exceptions, but in general, things were becoming more entertaining than meaningful. This, to Emery, was another sort of evolution, and likely unavoidable. Every art saw it. The unfortunate proclivity to create in a way that pleased people would always begin drawing value, usually in money, and this in turn called in the businessmen. The businessmen resorted to numerical data and word-of-mouth from odd sources, sometimes themselves, and their power would invariably begin to overwhelm the fashion in question.

Art always married Business, but after the excellent, heated honeymoon, Business hardened and solidified while Art went fluid, and all the arguments started there. Art invariably grew resentful of this behavior and wanted to talk all the time and Business became callous and abusive. Business would begin treating Art as property, and then Art would grow angry and cheat on Business until Business held Art's hand again and everyone apologized through the thick layers of suspicion in the air. Neither understood the other very well. This was a cycle, and through such gyrations, new arts could grow between the cracks. It was the sponsorial rhythm of publicity in the arts, and history had witnessed these green blades shoot from the stony decay of generations. Certain people simply had to make things that were their own. Other people preferred to then take this uniqueness and make it widely available. There was money somewhere in that arrangement. Business and Art lusted after and defied one another, and Emery had now performed for both sides of the marriage.

The trouble with Emery's profession was that he was falling from it nearly as fast as he had once risen. He felt he had too much to offer for a burning out, but very few were conceding to allow him fade away with any sort of grace. It was as if a lever had been thrown between those reputations of genius and clown.

Larry's death was still within him, a sort of constriction he could push off for a spell, only to have it return. The loss of his mother, and the suicide of Sol Jamison had spun him dizzy, but these were things most people could have isolated and accepted. The terrible things happened once in a great while, and were the stuff of life. Being a man meant getting past these tragedies, but for Emery, the troubles and awful events had come at strange times and collided with one another, gaining more strength than they might have had on their own. Larry's death had arrived at the near exact moment when Emery had begun to finally feel normal again, and this death had caused an opaque form of turmoil.

These horrible things seemed no longer isolated. The cancellations and deaths and failures and illnesses were not rare. They kept happening with constancy. One on the heels of the last. Whenever good things were afoot... bad things were hidden in them. He had grieved, yes, and all was done, but grief was to be settled and relegated to the past. This was the only way to get through it. Emery could no longer hide things away in a box of woes. He needed to handle them and dislodge them. To get over the ills of life as they came. Unfortunately, many of these rode within the good things, and cleaning his slate meant getting past all of it: His successes and his failures. This was somewhat like a prolonged convulsion, but he wanted to clean his mind and heart for the years to come. He was attempting to essay himself from a particular mire, but he was trapped by the predicament of an insufferable power in memory, a thing that fought painfully to shape one's future and perception, even against one's desire and motive. He did not like himself much and wanted to be another man.

Now was a new time with an approaching new decade, and his bag of tricks needed a clear run. The conundrum was that he was treated as if the proverbial old dog that had no new tricks, yet he was a mere forty-four years old, and no one had seen the majority of his actual tricks yet, had they? He had only given the world a few particulars he thought it might like, but this was only one of his skills. There were more. The majority more.

Beginning with the onset of 1970, he would be traveling in a new direction. Theater, finally, as well as pilots for a variety of shows that were well-thought and just as fiery as his earlier work with _All the System_. He would not be reinventing himself, but simply showing more of his highly variable facets to the world. He was known as Mr. Speculative, but this had always been but a side-project to him. Larry had understood this, and his passing felt to be a marker that, among many meanings, contained the essence of moving on and looking out for the future. Emery was using this tragic event to signal his own, internal burying of the past. The inconvenience of this, however, was a vexation Larry had understood all to well: The past would not leave.

Even then, Emery sat on the couch with his wife watching _The After Hours_ , something so similar to his past work that he both wanted to both congratulate and kick himself. Beth was excited at the prospect of her husband heading a new show, if the movie caught flight. Emery only pretended to be excited. This trilogy of stories, if it were to function as a pilot and, after the numbers came in, be given the reigns of an anthology program, would be difficult and something Emery did not want to do. He needed work, but did not want to be inundated with it, exhausting himself as had happened with previous shows.

There was a side of Emery that hoped the movie failed in its intent. The money would be grand, and having a show to exhibit his works was somewhat crucial, but his mind had already abandoned this format and he was functioning mostly in a prolonged, television-induced hangover. He wanted to start fresh, but with five Emmys, two previous charges of plagiarism, and a little public outcry peppering his career, there was no such thing. He would always be tethered and considered with an eye toward his strongest successes and his most abject failures. These things of his, for whatever reason, were incredibly potent in the public's hindsight, but the negative always had a stronger hold on that opinion's oily steering wheel.

Creative control was source of contention for him. He needed it in order to keep a show his own, to foster his vision, yet with this control came all the backlash, all the exhaustion and missed family, all the foul events that clogged a writer's skull and damaged his reasoning for wanting to share a story with the world. If _The After Hours_ was chosen to be a show, he had already decided to give up contractual creative control. Management could be damned. He did not want to helm a show; he wanted to write it. That was all. Writing, not ruling. How wondrous it would be to type up scripts, being a writer, while some other poor heart-attacker dealt with all the troubles of production. This was how Emery had functioned before _The Other Side_ , and it was the manner by which he wanted to do things in the future.

Emery was a writer, one who had gripped the various levers of production well enough, but in order to succeed in the wake of his failures, his relegation to the very gutters of television's waning prestige, he needed to write, and only write. He would still host episodes, if they were to happen, but beyond hosting, he would write scripts and keep out of the business as much as possible. This would allow him to work on his other projects, and especially his plan on venturing into live theater, something he had struggled with since his outset in freelance. Giving up creative control would be a risk, but now was the time for such things. The new youth had figured this out. It was the one facet of their ideal-mongering that appealed to him, beyond the adoption and propulsion of the civil rights, which was necessary for all people, not just the youth.

The two parents glanced over when Vivian entered the living room with her paper in hand.

"All done?" Beth asked. The daughter nodded quickly and rubbed her eyes, tired from staring at white and nearing the sleepiness that always accompanied her bed time. Emery reached over for the paper but Vivian pulled it back a bit, which surprised him.

"It's fine," the daughter said, slowly exiting the room and heading for her own.

"Teeth," the mother called. Vivian stopped and sighed, then made her way to the bathroom.

The assignment that Vivian had finished was that of a short story. Three-hundred words and in the first person. Emery had been delighted by this and was looking forward to reading it when she was done, but she had drawn back at this. The father sat on the couch and stared at his work on the television, inattentive, mind adrift on the challenges of parenthood.

"It's funny," he said after several moments, "She always wants to show me her homework, and I always look over it, but when she finally has an assignment I'm really interested in, something I actually know a lot about, she doesn't want me to see it at all."

Beth moved the bowl of the remaining popcorn, which now consisted exclusively of hard kernels that had not popped, to the small stand beside the couch. When there was room, she leaned against his shoulder in a sleepy way.

"Well, probably because she wants to keep it hers. You cast a lot of shadows. She probably doesn't want something creative of hers to end up being judged by daddy the writer," Beth said, "If I wrote a story, I wouldn't want you reading it. I wouldn't want you anywhere near it." Emery muddied over this a moment, his brow furrowed in the mystification of family.

"Oh."

**Chapter Thirty-Six**

The series of events that led to the fruition of a full-fledged series were arduous yet quick, and some facets of creating a show were often overlooked by even those particular agencies that caused them. The pilot movie had been well-regarded, despite the doubt the movie-theater crowd now held for Emery Asher. It seemed those particular people did not watch much television, and preferred to shout and argue the informal statements made in cinema more than the small screen. This discovery, of the show being granted a season, gave Emery a sense of belonging again, even though the idea of a series was now daunting to him for all the hard work he knew would be required of him. His mood had been quite active in his perception of late, and with a show on the line, he now felt good again. Perhaps television still loved him in a way, and had not turned on him so much as a network had, and possibly the public still wanted what he made, and he had only been treated to the souring of a certain small but loud demographic. Perhaps that had been Hollywood fanaticism and the sort of heckling that only masqueraded as having import on his career.

People, numerically, had been decided still receptive to Emery on the home screen. While there was the chance they were tuning in only to point and denigrate him some more, there was also the hope that he was still regarded as possessing that elusive light of talent for which everyone seemed to be looking. He was a professional, after all.

CUT TO:

INT. 'THE AFTER HOURS' MUSEUM SET - NIGHT

The striking scene of exhibits, each brightly spotlit in the very dim gallery. These are the only things visible save for a velvet-rope that surrounds the circular scene.

We watch all but one exhibit dim to black. We push in to a medium shot of that particular painting. A spotlight slams on, showing HOST ASHER, standing in the gallery in a brown suit, his body in frame, somewhat beside the painting. He has snuck up on us from the dark. ASHER motions to the painting and addresses us.

HOST ASHER:

Art is a beautiful shock to one's sensibilities. The best of it shakes us into the servitude of high praise and historic respect, while the worst of it isn't worth the barest, disinterested glance. Where the power in a work of art comes from is in its manner, its fashion, in the style of a time or perception, and often in the arousal of story. The work you see behind me tells one such tale, a story of obsession and detail, of odds and conceit. Its subject is one Marcus Riley, a man that seems painted in many ways, depending on what the viewer wishes to see, and a man whose physical appearance is in constant change. Mr. Riley has the peculiar fate of appearing as other people want him to. For better... or much worse. We call this story "Skins Deep".

SLOW ZOOM to the painting until it fills the frame. This painting establishes a DINER interior, with a MAN speaking to a WAITRESS in a relaxed, Rockwellian scene.

LAP DISSOLVE TO:

INT. MURPHY'S DINER - EVENING

We see the identical, real-life scene outlined in the painting. We have dissolved from the painting to an identical, but real, scene.

MARCUS RILEY, the man, is speaking with the WAITRESS. We notice them as their scene continues.

WAITRESS:

You sure like to eat, mister. You gonna save any room in there for dessert?

MARCUS:

(disinterested)

No, thank you.

WAITRESS:

Well, if you change your mind, let me know.

She begins walking away with the coffee. After a moment, she stops and speaks to MARCUS again.

WAITRESS:

You know, there's something I've been noticing since you came in. I think... thing is, you look familiar to me. Have we met before?

MARCUS:

We've never met, no.

WAITRESS:

Wait, yeah, I got it. You... you look a lot like my father when he was younger.

MARCUS:

(rolling his eyes)

You don't say.

WAITRESS:

Yeah... wow, you're a spitting image, too. Huh! He uh, he passed a few years back.

MARCUS nods absently and continues eating. The WAITRESS, a little put off, returns the coffee to the machine behind the counter.

CUT TO:

C.U. of MARCUS, who slowly stops eating. He seems troubled for a moment. We see him push his plate away and give a sigh. His eyes seem to have softened a bit, and he now wears a look of slight interest, or even a touch of compassion.

MARCUS:

You must miss him very much.

FADE TO:

Good numbers. The first actual episode of _The After Hours_ , as a new anthology show, had hit well enough, and now that fan mail had become staple in the television world, it began to trickle in with immediacy. The story had involved many cosmetic appliances for Gary Carr, the actor who played Marcus, and the network had at first dragged its feet over this. The trouble was not so much the money, as makeup departments had gotten better at working with the format, especially since all shows had transformed into the arena of color, but that the network was wary of beginning the show with a piece that risked a makeup effect as a major element. These ran a risk of backfiring. A bad cosmetic in a launch episode could lose crucial viewers for good. Emery had convinced the producer, Ed Baird, along with the director of the episode, Andy Ricard, that the special effects would be minimal and to the point, and would look fine.

Emery remembered it had taken almost a full year before getting his first piece of fan mail for _The Other Side_ , but things were quicker now. The times in general had more of a frenetic pace. Things were more polarized than they had been, and even the route to how the television world functioned was not so long and confounded as it had once been. The measure of but a few years could cause this. _The After Hours_ had been given a full season on which to gauge the nature of its wings, and Emery had given up creative control of the show at the outset. He was a writer only, with occasional stops at the studio to shoot his introductions and closers, just as he had done for _The Other Side_ , but without all the troubles of producing.

By the launch of the new year, many of the episodes had already been shot. The workday was strong for him, and simple enough that he had time for other projects. He was a man who wrote for a show, not a man enveloped and suffocated by one. Things were more streamlined this time around, not only for him, but for all concerned.

A new decade had begun, and the fan-base for _The After Hours_ was odd. These fans were neither the bread-and-butter housewife sort, not the well-read, curious sort. Those fans had propelled him in the past, but _The After Hours_ had an entirely different breed of viewer, and these seemed to prefer anything with a hint at the outlandish. He had lost some of his own self-esteem in taking on the speculative show. While his foray into these genres, and his literary ambition for them, had been a side-project come to life in the fashion of Frankenstein's monster, lording over his career and haunting it, those few people who still took his work seriously felt let down that he was moving right back into speculation and the other-worldly. Those who only mildly liked his work, however, felt it would have been silly not to return to that particular mode. Who to please? This question was his own, and weighed heavily in his thoughts. The answer was that he could only please whoever a network contracted him to please. Many people felt he was copying his past feats, a child repeating the same joke again and again, unaware that the attention he was getting was more annoyance than legitimate interest. Reviews for _The After Hours_ had begun their rounds, and unlike _The Other Side,_ or _The Deserter_ , and especially his older work before those shows, these reviews were disinterested. It seemed the public was fond of the show, but the critics were somewhat agitated by what they perceived a lackluster attempt at re-igniting a particularly dated fire that had died out years ago. After years of trouble with the viewers and praise from the gaugers, it seemed the critics and the public had now changed places in how they viewed him. The last few years had been difficult, but he would lift above those troubles.

As a writer responsible for scripting a contractual 50% of the show's episodes, there was room for another writer, possibly two. The network wanted four, which Emery fought against, but having given up creative control of the show, and not being a producer, he had no real say in the matter. Two other writers were hired by the network, with one further position given for Emery to fill with the writer of his choice. This was the network's way of compromise, and it was both heavy-handed and troublesome. The writers NBC had placed beside him were young and fresh from school. They had ideas, and a few big ones, but their idea of writing involved more shock than substance. They wanted mummies and werewolves and slashers, without much dramatic storytelling around these things. They wanted to end the episodes with an element of horror, a wicked cackle for the eyes, maybe a bit of gore, but not with any sort of thoughtfulness. The scripts they wrote turned Emery off completely, and seemed better suited to B-grade horror flicks than actual drama.

The producer was an overweight, bearded man with a great many ideas. Some of these were brilliant, and others were awful. Despite what sort of idea he was summarizing, Ed Baird did things fast and in a strange, hidden way. The producer had taken creative control of the show, and he did not like people. Baird was no curmudgeon, but rather an intense and creative man who had trouble talking to others unless he was in a position of control. Many thought Baird a sort of reclusive genius, though some of that behavior was certainly acting, Emery thought. The scenario that bothered Emery most was that this hippie version of Sol Jamison was also a writer, and having creative control, had placed himself in charge of the rewrites. The executive producer, the money man, was now the editor and creative consultant. This could have been an ominous signpost of spartan trouble ahead.

Therein was the first of his large-scale problems with the show: He was a writer of drama that enjoyed employing a mask of the surreal, using speculative jaunts and fable-like morals, but the producer and the other writers did not seem to want this. They wanted the mask only. They wanted the vampire, and they wanted it sucking blood, and they did not want its religious, familial, or ethical qualms. Their preference was to skip the come-uppance and jam a stake in a monster's heart so everyone gets a scream at the end. They certainly did not want a moral in their own stories. They wanted more of the Brothers Grimm than Aesop, and they wanted it, at the behest of Baird, formatted for ease of budget. They considered Emery the man who would give them his name and the man who would write the "literary horror" and "realist speculation", while they would write other tales, mainly pulp-styled science-fiction and horror, what Tom Nash had once called 'potboilers', which was a term Emery had fought hard to keep from his name. The other writers on the show separated from Emery early on, and did not talk to him much.

He sat with his ear to the receiver, his free thumb and forefinger circling his temples, listening to the carefully chosen words that came through the line.

"So I have to keep myself in one place for awhile, is all. I don't want to spread too thin. I'm honored, Em. Truly. I just can't wrap my head around two different shows," Calvin said.

"No, I understand. You're busy, and rightly so," Emery backpedaled, "I'm allowed my pick for one writer, my own guy, and I wasn't sure if you'd have the time or not, but I just wanted you to get the offer first."

"Thank you; I do appreciate it. In another dimension, I could do it. But man, I've got so much going on right now that I just can't step that far out of the room I'm in, you know? I've been writing books, too."

"I know, and good for you. I do get it, Cal. How uh, how'd that space epic job go?"

"Well, it was just the one episode, could have been more but I didn't like working with those guys. They're some real... Well, they're something, is all I'm gonna say. It'll go on-air in a couple of months. They're always looking for guest writers and all those guys know you by name, so you could give it a shot sometime, if you wanted."

"Maybe I'll do that," Emery said.

The conversation continued, in the technical sense, until neither could manage to avoid the awkwardness any longer, and they said their temporary goodbyes and gave each other the customary well-wishes that were expected. Emery hung up the phone and sat in his den, chain-smoking and eyeing the half-empty fifth of whiskey on his desk. He had suspected what the other writer had now solidified. Calvin Moffat wouldn't go anywhere near _The After Hours_. Oh, Calvin would never admit such a thing openly, but Emery knew the man well, and the message was clear: Several episodes had aired and Calvin likely thought it was a terrible show. It was the sort of thing the two of them had once poked fun at back on _The Other Side_. This struck Emery in an unexpected and damaging way. He had hoped Moffat would come aboard and help him make the show something strong, but it seemed Emery was on his own, swimming around in network waters with chum in his hair.

He needed a writer in his corner. Someone to look out for the sort of writing Emery wanted. This person needed to be a bit intimidating, probably from experience, and possibly age, and the person needed to be outspoken and a capable writer. It was disheartening that Calvin was not interested. Moffat had those tumid attributes for which Emery was in heavy need.

Emery was not so young as to commute a great distance for a speaking engagement anymore, and so he booked flights at irregular intervals and attempted to be sparse in his out-of-state commitments. Emery had loved the mad spree of his lecture tour, the constant flights from continent to continent, one country after the next, but this was something he did not want to repeat. He wanted his schedule open enough to handpick certain lectures, but not so open that he became overwhelmed in engagements. The travel, while brief, could be burdensome, though did get him away from Los Angeles, a place in which he had begun to feel trapped. The sunny weather was sanctifying, but the sudden and cloudy nature of his field was a severe drain on his volition. Travel was kind to him, so long as he did not throw himself to it.

Over the course of several months, he had agreed upon and fulfilled several obligations on the lecture circuit, though his dallying with this was not so much circuitous as occasional. The current superintendent of Binghamton High School, a school that had resulted when North High School and Central had combined in his old home town, had asked him to come and speak for a graduating class, being that Emery was half-alumni and quite well-known. This was a service he was more than pleased to accommodate. The new youth were in a pedigree turmoil these days, and leaning every which way to find a meaning for themselves that wasn't wholeheartedly systemic. The draft had been a large part of this, as had the hippy movement, no matter how those motions were to be considered or haphazardly summarized.

Being a cog in the American machine had an unfortunate side: Following the Second World War and atop the bare back of this new bloodshed in Vietnam, taking one's place in those most conservative parts of America's machinery was more unappealing than ever. Emery understood it enough to see the dilemma for what it was: Unfairness. The societal and economic place these teenagers were expected to settle, to dig in and begin fulfilling, was more unfair to them than it had been in previous decades. One could not blame them for wanting to change this, though one could quite well hold them accountable for blaming most everyone else.

The nightmares had quieted in recent months, but he knew this was simply the equinox phase they went through. They would return by Summer, as they always did. He felt wedged into a certain form of servitude with _The After Hours_ , but the show was keeping him in scripts and giving him, at the minimum, something to do. The lectures paid a little and a family could be kept afloat on this income so long as he kept lecturing, but the real money came from the show. Regardless of where the money came from, no amount of it could serve in place of what he truly wanted: That simple and yet difficult matter of esteem in his profession. Perhaps this was vain of him. Arrogant.

He had been given a taste of esteem and had been marked by it, like the cigarettes he drained of nicotine or the love he felt for his wife and daughters. The notion of a 'comeback' had become a staunch portion of his drive, and its nuances had altered the image he had of himself. He was no leading man, but had for a time accepted bright lights and a potent sort of attention. He supposed that had been happenstance, temporary, and its time had now passed. Unfortunately, it had gone to his head, and he had made many mistakes. He had returned from that sort of life, however. He was just a writer now, getting by well, and he could control both his ego and need for attention well enough. His marriage seemed to have balanced back into a function close to its initial state, that lovely mode it had known before his infidelity had churned it into uncertain chaff, and his home life was steady again. He was just a writer, a slight actor, and occasionally, a speaker. He was a name.

Being given lectures showed there was some respect for him floating around, but not where he worked, not where he hunted his game. That was being held in regard by strangers of little connection to his day-to-day life. No, the lectures were more a joint-effort between one writer and those other writers and instructors that better understood the reality of where he lived and labored.

Having the respect of the television world stripped from him in the odd manner this had occurred was as if laying in bed for hours on end, trying to get into that comfortable, wondrous mode of sleep always just out of reach, always about to happen. He could suppose that this was a sort of torpor, an awful predicament, but no more so than the troubling narratives that often occurred when he did reach his comfort and sleep. Work was the thing. A creative sort of man needed to continue working, to make each thing better than the previous. Emery was driven and moving, and this was enough to satisfy his ethic, so long as he could remain optimistic that those things beyond his scripts were going to get better, as well. So long as he kept his grip and breathed. He and Emery Asher were somewhat different people now.

**Chapter Thirty-Seven**

When Joe Collery had agreed to become Asher's ace in the hole, it was expected he write in the manner Emery was accustomed. Collery had been hired because of his seven scripts that had aired on _The Other Side_ , but also because he was a large man with a stern voice who looked up to Emery much. Joe Collery had expressed a certain respect for Emery early on in their previous work together, and had contributed here and there. At first, Emery did not want to use another writer from the Orange Grove group, due to its relationship with Orson Banry, who presided over it as a figurehead, but Emery was a beggar in this instance, and needed to take the lesser of evils. Despite Emery's troubles with Banry, the novelist's writer friends had always been excellent providers. Perhaps using a writer from the Orange Grove might calm Banry down a bit and settle things. Their squabbles in the past still weighed on Emery's mind.

He was aware of the hypocritical dilemma he had brought to life: Emery wanted Joe Collery to write what Joe had written before, new stories but in a particular vein. Emery had learned quickly, however, that Collery was a multi-talented individual, and did not like to write the same thing repeatedly. Emery had the same ethic, a drive to attempt new things while perfecting old things. Alas, within a few months, Emery began to understand that having Collery write for _The After Hours_ could be more of a burden than a blessing. Instead of staying with Emery in ideal, promoting a singular vision for the show, he bickered with the network writers over other things.

Collery could not be contained. He had become a bit of a lone gun, with his own ideas, and while this was a great thing in a writer, it was also serving to water down Emery's chances at seeing his own ideas reach fruition. Among other things, Joe Collery was supposed to be Emery's supportive constituent, that the two of them together might steer more of the show, but Collery had instead become a spoiler, dividing the vote. Emery had hired a man who now tended to stir things up more than settle them. Unless Emery began doing the same, kicking up dust with Collery, the two would simply get in one another's way, and the show would suffer. Ed Baird held a strong dislike of Collery, and the two clashed creatively. Joe Collery had only ever written episodes for various shows. He had never been a member of a program's roster staff. He had schooled in the university of guest writing, exclusively. Now that he was a bona-fide writer for an anthology, and not simply a guest writer contracted for two or three episodes, Emery was learning that Joe Collery had never learned how to kiss ass, collaborate, or weather the bad days. These abilities were crucial in the television world, if a writer was going to stick around longer than a few episodes.

At the season's halfway point, there had been so little depth to the stories _The After Hours_ had aired. The title sequence was excellent, the music haunting, and the direction was good, most of the time, but the writing and the way scripts were handled was quite troublesome. Ed Baird, the producer, went over every script and rewrote them to his preference, and some days, this preference grated on Emery with fervor. The show had embarked on a sea of mediocrity, and from there degraded into a thing to which Emery did not want to remain attached. The contract for the show served as a bissus, however, and kept him affixed to the sinking rock expertly. He was required to write 50% of the episodes for a second season, if one was to be granted, and he was working hard to fulfill this, but Baird had begun rejecting much of Emery's work. Creative control was empowering Ed Baird into the vision the man had in his mind, but that vision was unpredictable and highly sporadic. Emery submitted for approval, and was summarily sent home with rejections.

In previous engagements, this would not be much of a problem, as he was paid a small amount for the submitted scripts whether or not they were used. The executives for _The After Hours_ , however, all of them somewhat new and fresh, young and talented sorts with eyes for business, were considering the rejected scripts a failure on his part to reach his quota. To them, anything that was rejected did not count toward his 50%, which meant he was in danger of not meeting the contractual percentage, which would not only put him in breach of contract, but could become a lawsuit. The irony was that he had written nearly thirty scripts in the past year, and only two of them had been chosen for production. He was meeting his contract's quota quite well, but the quota was not allowing him in due to Baird's rejections. Worse, he felt these were some of his best new scripts, yet they were incessantly sent back as unacceptable. Baird had also begun taking Emery's rejected scripts and rewriting them himself, bringing them to meetings from time to time and accepting his own draft against Emery's will. Did this count toward the fulfillment of Emery's quota? That depended on Baird's mood, and whether Emery thought Baird was a genius yet, or not.

It seemed the network had a particular few ideas for the show, as well, but these remained almost as mysterious and vague as Baird's vision. They spoke only with producers, and Emery was not one of those. Despite Ed Baird's befuddling interferences and off-putting, anti-social attitude, his unpredictable nature and his hit-or-miss meetings, Baird did prove quite adept at keeping the network producers at bay. He had a knack for pleasing them, likely due to the side work he did rewriting scripts for a variety of other shows. The network often sent him scripts whenever they were in a pinch. He was a good writer in the studio sense, but his conceits were invisible and his talent was in melding the work of others into the work a network enjoyed. He did this by transfiguring the work heavily.

Emery could see the rising tide and the particularly low rock to which he had strapped himself. Giving up creative control had been a sovereign mistake. By the start of the second season, the show was already devolving into mostly shock stories, gore and jumps at the camera, and these contained so little merit outside of the moments in which the corny devices occurred. This was giving the show a quickly stacking culmination of embarrassing scenes. They were silly, passing dots of tawdriness.

Passed down from the network clouds was the commandment that an episode would now be twenty-four minutes, leaving six for commercials. These episodes could have been told in five, however. It was as if the newest viewing public had somehow forgotten that a story was only worth seeing or hearing when that story was worth telling. No one wanted to tell these stories but the younger, inexperienced writers, and even they were quick to laugh at one another's work before moving on to the next project. It was as if the writers on the show didn't care about what they were writing at all. Why were they writers if they had no interest in creating something of their own? This was business to them, not art. They were enterprise writers that thought they were, by having written a script or two, the better fellows of Shakespeare. They wrote little things, gimmicks and gags, quickly aborting any trace of meaning in favor of more little things.

_A white man, who apparently desecrated an ancient tomb while on vacation, walks to his mailbox once he's back home and sees a mummy shamble out from an alleyway. He panics and runs. He ends up in the black neighborhood. No one will help him. A young black man tells him to go away, to lead the mummy out of their neighborhood. The white man runs some more, hides, runs, hides, and finally, the mummy cuts him off and grabs him. The man yells and is killed. Then the mummy shambles toward the young black man, who happens to be nearby. Oh no. The mummy's still coming. Apparently, there's something about racism or segregation or being neighborly. The critics will figure something out of all that. Cut to credits._ Supposedly there was a 'lesson to be learned' in that neighbors, even those of differing races and neighborhoods, should help one another. This was pointless doctoring when the story was so crass, however. It was a dry, rag-monster, and either of the two men could have probably stopped that mummy with a book of matches. Another stupid monster story written by the network kids.

More troublesome than the simple scripts was that the network had promoted both of the younger, inexperienced writers. Emery and Joe were treated with big smiles and handshakes but ushered off quickly. They weren't invited to many of the meetings. When they did catch wind of one and infiltrate it, their ideas were always heard out, and then quietly dismissed once they were no longer standing there. One of the studio writers had become a supervising producer, and the other, a smooth-talking man, had been given reigns as an executive producer. It had been a mistake for Emery to give up creative control, but this trouble was not as grievous as when the two in-house writers were granted such vast control of the program. Baird and his two writers had become presidential in mood. This meant that _The After Hours_ was their show in all ways, essentially making Emery their employee, rather than a seasoned, heavily-awarded writer who had ventured down Prime-Time Lane numerous times, a man from which much could be learned.

_The After Hours_ was not Emery's show. It never really had been, and the hacks were now his overseers, reacting to him in the way animal-handlers treated a misbehaving dog. Why had he been offered a show in the first place? What point was there in keeping him involved with _The After Hours_ at all? Though worse for wear, his name was that reason. His name solely. The studio wanted to place his name in the opening animation with large letters and a bold face:

EMERY ASHER'S

### The After Hours

This was contrived, and with obvious intent to make the show seem his, to assure the public that Emery Asher was writing and hosting these episodes, that the show was all his. The public believed it. He was being molested behind the curtain while the novices flashed their scripts and the actors flubbed their lines. He had been hobbled and was now strapped down, nude, to a titlecard bearing his name. Emery did not want to believe that. There had to be more to his functioning role than simply his name and appearance.

When the vampire cackled in his dull, faux-Transylvanian accent and made for the heroine's neck, when the blood spurt on the camera lens and the scream was heard, Emery's name was there. When the exploitation episode aired, the one that depicted a group of young black men as angry, criminal hipsters that help an old, southern, white hick get hung from a tree by the ghosts of slaves, Emery's voiceover was there. Every woman was screaming in fright and every man wanted to fight some monster that would invariably kill him, if only so the audience could hear the woman scream again. And this was all thought to be Emery's doing, the dramatist who had either lost his edge or had sold out in the most utter and complete manner possible.

He had committed to a number commercial spots in the past, as a way to make a bit of income until his career started up again, and now he had to make do on several of them, performing for the advertisers, hawking their products as he watched his name get injected weekly with the taint of bad writing. The commercial endorsements and the grating audacity of cheap thrills on the show acted as a one-two punch to any trace of respectability he might have still grappled to keep. He was fucked. His new image was an ugly disaster of hackneyed devices and bad writing, writing not approximate to his own, and it wore him like a cheap suit.

The show was garbage, and everyone thought Emery was its progenitor and lord. They saw his fronting of the show and his name in the animation and his face in the lights. They watched his introductions and closers, wherein he was required to speak as if these episodes were worth even a tatter of their attention. A thirty-second spot praising Reuter's Diet Cola was bad enough, but now even his monologues had become as if bad commercial endorsements for yet another bad product. Worst of all was that he was that shitty product, himself.

The reviews were so awful that he had stopped reading them. The Emmys sat in his study staring at him as if he were a son that had disgraced his elders. As far as the public was concerned, he may as well have been a vibrator buzzing away its last bit of power at the bottom of a garbage can. Emery Asher now seemed like an arrogant writer who had lost his abilities outright but refused to go away.

There had been a few episodes that had pulled in a touch of deference. Not all was bad. The world had taken on the situational comedy as its mainstay for television, but this had caused uncommon and elusive dramas to be given more scrutiny and attention. In those rare instances one of his scripts was accepted and shot, the reviews became positive; the critics displayed a fair amount of interest. This could nearly be plotted on a graph: The more of Emery's writing taken on, and the less Baird intervened with that script, the better the reviews were. Collery was running in the same mode. His scripts made for strong episodes. The two of them would salute one another, but then the next episode would air, a stinker that one of the vomiters had poured out, and the public would look upon whoever had previously praised the show with a shake of the head. It was becoming a bit taboo to be fond of Emery Asher. The critics knew who wrote what, as it was listed at the back end of the final credits, but the reviewers and public did not pay much attention to this, or even watch the final credits. It was easier to change the channel and begin inadvertently supporting whatever other show at which they happened to stop.

While the reviews of episodes written by Emery Asher or Joe Collery were strong, these reviews meant little to the overseers. The network and the empowered two writers, as well as the most empowered writer, Ed Baird, did not see reviews so much as they saw those numbers of viewers the network relied on. They had learned a new and particularly mischievous facet of the art: Getting people to like something was not nearly as important as getting someone to merely watch it. By this mode, and had they the gall to attempt it, a half-hour of a woman sitting on a toilet would have given them the highest ratings in history. The onlookers had trumped the view, it seemed, and become it. This convinced the advertisers that there were hordes of people tuning in to the show. Even if these people were only there to stare at the blood spatters and make fun of them, or to zone out and do nothing but watch a silly story for a half-hour. No matter the reason, this was popularity, and these were, in the technical sense, viewers.

The short term was the new game. Get them to watch for part of a season, then throw the show into the ground and quickly find another that could keep the viewers watching a little longer, one with new characters and an ever-so-slight alteration in story. A show did not need to have fans, but rather, simply be new enough to get people to watch it for a short while. "New" meant instant watchers, for a time. If a network kept throwing new things at an audience, the audience kept tuning in to that network. The ever-changing line-up had become the spectacle, rather than any show, itself. There were longstanding shows still being aired, but only those rare few that survived being new, and many of these seemed chosen as if by lottery.

The advertisers were ready, of course. They had money and they went for whatever was being watched the most. The shows seemed designed to play off one another. Eventually, one of these random shows would make it into the long-term, would prove itself popular and bankable, and that was when television would be said to innovate again. The networks no longer fished for whales, they dredged the sea for miles and dumped it all on the docks for the audience to pick through. This, it seemed, was enough to bring the viewers back, repeatedly, simply because they didn't know what they might find.

The cancellation of _The After Hours_ was obvious, and an utter relief to him. After a full year of attempting to write for the third season of the cursed show, and another four months of having nearly given up even returning phone calls regarding it, _The After Hours_ was officially going to close. Emery was relieved and thankful for this turn of events, yet angry over the sullying the show had done to his reputation. His name was all he had left, and it was now diseased. A new wave of people were running television, all having taken over in the last eight years or so, and many of them had no idea what he had actually done in the past or why. They saw a slight celebrity they remembered from earlier days, despite that those earlier days were but a decade past. Perhaps a decade was a long time, anymore. It felt quite short to Emery.

Banry had attempted another lawsuit against him, this time over an episode of the failed show, but had discovered in doing this that Emery had not even written that episode; one of the network writers had authored the dull thing. It was no more an act of plagiarism than the past lawsuits against Emery had alleged, and the networks had come down on Banry quickly and with much weight. The lawsuit was rescinded as abruptly as it had begun, and even Joe Collery, who admired Banry greatly, thought the aged novelist was getting what he deserved for filing so many frivolous copyright lawsuits. There had been others over the years, not simply those filed against Emery Asher.

Joe Collery would be returning full-time to his stomping grounds with the Orange Grove group, working over his new novel under Banry's tutelage. Now that the show was cancelled, Joe would merge back into his fellows and seek work. Joe's respect for Banry was professional, not personal, and he admired the ground-breaking stories Orson Banry had penned over the years, not the author's cry-wolf behavior or ego. Emery supposed there was still some respect to be had for Orson Banry, despite all the trouble the man had caused him. Within the swell-headed, loudmouthed, sue-happy man, there was still a great writer, and one doing far better than Emery, of late.

It had been nearly eight years since Emery's highly successful and multi-cancelled show had gone off the air, and about ten since he was well-regarded. His career was now radioactive and no one would want near it after this. He had been somewhat killed off, like a character in a teleplay, and had likely aided this much. He was no longer alive in his art. He was like Maury Aaron, like Sol Jamison, and like Larry Belmont. They were remembered by their friends, like Emery was, but to the world, they were dead. At rest. Nobodies. Emery was the same now, but with the luxury of still breathing. He was no longer offered work, and the mail was sparse. Even the commercial world had stopped asking him to endorse their products. His last endorsement, for Ostrich, in which he was to peddle their new line of snapshot cameras, had been rescinded upon the cancellation of _The After Hours._ No one was knocking on the door. The phone seldom rang unless it was someone calling for Vivian.

There were actions he could take, approaches he might foster in order to get his career back and provide for his family, even in a minute sense, but these seemed cumbersome and doomed to setbacks within fallbacks, and most certainly the sort of campaign only a younger Emery could have waged.

His nerves were muck and his reason for writing had been slashed open too many times to see it for what it had been at the start. There were things attached to him, weighing him down. Television was a creature that saw him as an old horse that was needed at the glue factory. He was forty-eight, finished with the breakneck schedules, the constant revisions to his income, the incessant work-arounds, and those all-too-common monetary patches over every sudden wound. Emery was exhausted with the meddling of others and the constant intrusions on his family life. He was fatigued with his career, his days, and even his writing. He was done.

The writer smoked and he drank and he strained his eyes on the white page. His wrists hurt and his wife now looked at him in a sort of pity. Beth believed in him, yes, and her support was always present, but she had no love for the workings of television. She felt sorry for her husband having to put up with such a haggard and convoluted occupation. Emery could detect this unspoken pity from his wife and he wanted to punch himself. He thought of Chayefsky, of Vidal... they had vacated the television world long ago. Emery had once thought these writers had abandoned television due to a particular weakness, an inability to stomach those troubles inherent to reaching a true bounty. He understood now. They had seen what he could not. There was no bounty. There was no weakness. They were not deserters, but men who had undertaken a few decent lays before moving on to higher ground; nothing stayed exciting for long and television was a petty, judgemental sort of trull. She kept her pets with a choke-chain, as no leash was short enough to please her.

"Beth, hon, let's have a talk. I have something to say and I need to know what you think."

"Oh?"

Emery had no plan of action and no prospect, which was a panicky affair to a man in his middle age. Vivian was on the verge of starting high school now, and Rebecca was going off to college near the end of Summer. Beth watched her husband sit idle, unsure of what she could do to help him. He was somewhat lost. Emery's view of his family was more pressured, however: he saw in his wife's watching not the compassion she held for him, but rather a never-ending contemplation of "what now?" She had begun to elude him. He felt he did not know her as well as he had only five years ago. He had managed to redeem his vows to her, and they were the better for it, but so little was certain anymore. Rebecca was all but silent to him. Vivian was next, beginning to go the route of her sister, replacing the advice of her parents somewhat with the advice of her friends. This was supposedly the normal dynamic of parenting, but it frightened him. He had placed his wits and time on yet another cancelled show. The year was all struggle, but at least there would be some double-edged relief in not having to do _The After Hours_ anymore. The scab of his career was prolonged and deep and would not heal over so long as he continued to disturb it. Why had he shoved back his family so much in the past?

"My goose is cooked. I'm finished, I think."

"That's not true, Emery. You're just feeling sorry for yourself."

He couldn't sit still. Something had to happen. Uncertainty felt like waste and waste felt like death. Emery had thought to create a clean break in his profession, in that he might start with a new mission or occupation. This was the way to do things, wasn't it? The manner of the blank slate? He had done this several times in the past, and now realized how dirty those clean breaks had been. How those slates had not been remotely blank, and that his mission was the same, year in and year out: Try to succeed in a business that did not, at the end of the day, want him, but that still begrudgingly accepted him, for he might stoke a few coals with his matchstick name and gold trophies. He had hooked his big fish and it had dragged him across the sea. The fish had been picked at to, a nip here and bite there, having now dwindled to flecks. The world laughed at the old man.

"I'm not happy. You're not happy. Rebecca is in college and Vivian will be leaving this Summer for the same."

"Emery, you're scaring me."

"I want to leave this place. This goddamn desert by the water. These people. Television. I want out."

"Honey, we can't just-"

"I love you so much. I love you so much. Do you understand me?"

"I- yes, fine. But moving away isn't something we can simply-"

"Yes, it is."

"I don't think you've thought this through."

"I have, and there's no reason to stay. Think about that for a moment. Really think about it: There is no reason to stay here."

"Are you really sure this is what you want?"

"Yes, but I'm asking if it's what _you_ want. Do you want to leave this place? Do you want us to be rid of it and do something else?"

He was two years from entering his fifties and he was a father to two excellent daughters that had spent their childhoods watching him work away from them. He was somehow married to a woman who still loved him after all the absence and stress, and in spite of his short stint as philanderer. He knew now that he was wholeheartedly needed elsewhere. He had already said his goodbyes to most of those people he had cared about, seeing them into the ground in the years past. He would call Calvin and Bernie and Joe soon, give them the news. It was time for a truly clean break, a new profession, and a better life for himself and his family. No more movies, no more endorsing, no more monologues and dusty awards and bad reviews and flop productions. No more writing.

"Oh Emery... I've wanted to get out this place from the start," she said.
**Chapter Thirty-Eight**

Crowded. Diverse. Unplayful. Overwhelming. New York was a bit of everything and quite divorced from the general feel life had in Los Angeles. Emery had been offered the chance to sit in on scriptwriting courses before, and though he had taught here and there, for short stints more often connected to lecture than true classes, an offer to teach full-time at Ithaca College was a new endeavor and hearty change in career for him. He had accepted the job, and the Ashers had relocated to the other side of the nation. Vivian's preparation for college occurred in the absence of friends, a predicament the relocation had caused her, but Rebecca was largely unaffected by the move, having chosen to stay out the year and remain in Los Angeles, where she had been living in a dorm for some time.

Beth found herself somewhat consumed with learning about their neighborhood and the many areas of New York, and spent a great amount of time trying to settle the new house. The transition had been manic for all concerned, but they had made it and they were no longer Californians. The amount of time Emery and Beth could spend together was greatened, and she found that leaving the strain of his television career had made Emery a different sort of man. He was more charming and personable and doubtless. He had found the young man she had married, here and there, and this young man was present again, manifesting at times in the middle-aged body.

After the dissolution of _The Other Side_ , Emery had made it a point to grant occasional lecture requests and temporary teaching positions when they came along. These teaching positions were workshop oriented and only ever lasted a week, at the longest. His new position was a true job, and Emery was quite pleased with the rational, secure nature of it. A man went to work and came home and there was a paycheck and no one haggled with him over the day's work. He enjoyed this work and was enamored with some of his students. What good was notoriety, especially past notoriety no longer so potent, if one could not pass on his lessons to that next wave reaching the shore on which he had once splashed so well?

The students in his two classes seemed nonchalant, generally disinterested beyond what they felt they were getting out of the lectures and assignments, which had much to do with the climax of a grade. There were one or two students who seemed occupied with him and who were, at times, a little knowledgeable about the past of television, though this knowledge seemed to hold a cut-off date of about two years.

Two years after something aired, that thing became the distant past, and not worth knowing intimately. Two years gone and a show was but the work of people who had moved on with stronger résumés. Two years turned _The Deserter_ into a footnote. Eight years made _The Other Side_ cretaceous in age. And fifteen years had made _All the System_ , his prize-winning roman candle of a career-igniter, all but dead nutrient for the lowliest decomposers, creatures that had passed, themselves, and been eaten by another generation of decomposers, and they, another. Those early stories simply did not exist anymore but for reference.

The ducky-dearies sat in their desks and absently scribbled notes, a few doing so with more urgency. There were women present, which was by no means a new matter for the university, but it was the first time he found more than one of them present in a scriptwriting workshop or class. This was a good arrangement. Television's male machinery needed a counterpart, but would likely fight it much. The blacks were free, and their civil rights had been fought hard for, but anyone with a set of eyes could see that this was still not quite definitive. There were layers within layers to freedom, equality, and civility, and some of these had not been exposed to light on both sides. There was still much work to do on these roadsides, and the roads were quite long and always interconnected.

More women entering the television business was a hopeful and needed endeavor that pleased Emery. Technically, they had been present in television from the start, but this was mostly in the realm of acting or assistance. There were a great many ignorant people in the world, and it was a sad affair that women were still somewhat thought of as potential makeup artists or actresses, and not writers or directors. This would change in time, it seemed obvious, and certainly, the youth were trying to effect change, but their movement had been struck mute by the shenanigans of the many, and the manner by which things had altered was difficult to pinpoint. Somewhere between grand idealism and "Kilroy was here", things had farted away into the dwindles of history's newest, great shrug. The well-meaning was there, but more in an abstract sense. Sensibilities had been transmogrified, but to what depth this reached was impossible to graph with any sort of truth. People were trying to do things. This was the most noticeable ramification of the past ten years: People were trying to do lots of things.

The difference between what he had done, giving the occasional lecture to a class, workshop, or a full-fledged tour of speaking engagements, and what he was now doing was the difference between flings and a marriage. His tours and past lectures had been affairs, but he was now going to marry lecture. He had become an instructor. With his college background, he could never be a professor, but he could still instruct. The students that sat before him were not a professor's students, for a class in which Emery had been invited to speak, and they were not to be another short break between his own television shows. These were Mr. Asher's students. The time for which he would teach was indefinite. This was his career now. His students were young New Yorkers with a penchant for words and a thirst to know how they might write better and push scripts onto those screens that lit almost every home in the nation.

In an odd predicament he could not have foreseen, the first day had gone quite badly. Public speaking was both teaching and performance, roles in which he should have had much skill. He had been on television extensively and performed lectures all over the world. He had accepted five Emmies and interacted with numerous students and professors in workshops. Strangely, having his own students was a much more intimate and ominous setting, and his nerves had played interference. He had stammered and forgotten much of his prepared lecture, falling instead to awkward improvisation. He had not done well.

The second day of class was much better, because he came up with a trick to comfort himself, as silly as it made him feel: He pretended the students were cameras. He began each day in the same state of mind he had once used to give his monologues. This would fade after a minute or two and he was able to coast into a more functional teaching mode. The process calmed him and would keep him talking until he could adjust to having the same group of live people before him day after day. This did not take long.

The end of this first term coincided with the arrival of Summer, and he had a bit of time off until the fall term. He was becoming more relaxed with New York, and with the idea of his new job. He had to keep remembering that he knew his subject, and knew it very well. There were days however, in which he found himself having to outwit certain doubts he held. When the Fall term came, he was better prepared, and tried to take on his classes with a sort of venerable sincerity.

"Well, just about every major developed country has its television broadcasts," he responded, "Because when a country begins using television, they almost always begin with the one-shot sports and news shows, the current events, and then what we see is that they gradually break into the more _multicellular_ arts... but these are drama, comedy, and things like speculation. The Australians, the Brazilians, the Japanese, the Germans... all of them are working with the medium just like the U.S., only differing largely in when they started. It takes time for television networks and that system to mature, and the U.S. had television earlier than the rest of the world, and of course, we absolutely loved it, and still do, so we've naturally been developing it longer. Now, the marriage between television and the viewing public is an arranged marriage, and the in-laws are in charge, but the product is, beyond a reasonable hypothesis made from ratings or even critical analysis, a good product. It can please us. It can inform. It can also make us think. On the best nights, it can do all three once. Everyone will catch up with us soon, I'm sure, because they're taking notes, I think. We're also a bit star-struck, if you haven't noticed. We tend to throw more money into our broadcasts, for the shows, yes, but also for the sponsors. Big business needs big advertising, and big advertising needs big television. This makes big writers and big directors, just as much as it makes big actors. And for big money, mind you. You might notice the word 'big' just came out of my mouth about a hundred times. That's television. This is true no matter what antenna in what country is picking up the latest signal. It may _look_ different, and evolve differently, and sometimes it actually feels quite small, but it's the same four-chambered heart across the board: If you've got advertisers, you're getting into a massive sort of business."

"But do you think it will get to the point that another country's television shows become more popular than ours?" a student asked.

"Sure. All empires fall. But actually, in a sense, this is already happening. Certainly the Spaniards watch more of their own television than ours, so in Spain, their television is more popular. To them. I think we will certainly see, and likely soon, that each country will have its hugely successful shows, and some of them may cross borders in time, when our broadcasting specialists find a method to cheaply send a television broadcast signal across the Atlantic. And I mean regularly. But we'll see that in our lifetime, definitely. Or at least, in your lifetimes. Canada is en route, and England is has a great variety of television shows. Numerous countries are initializing a sense of television, some of it gleaned from us, and some of it culturally their own. Just wait; you'll one day find yourself being able to choose from British shows put up right beside American shows."

"So it'll bring the world together, huh? You sure you're not a hippy, Mr. Asher?" Laughter in class was so welcome.

"I prefer genius and visionary," Emery said.

"Having done _The After Hours?_ "

More laughter. This could have been considered a cutting remark, but Emery had started the habit of deprecating his recent past and addressing his history in class each term. He had set himself up for a bit of teasing, here and there, and he looked forward to it. Emery did this with definite humility, and had no trouble accepting _The After Hours_ as having been somewhat of a career killer.

Emery Asher, television writer, was no more. Mr. Asher, university instructor, was the new man, and he fostered early in his classes the fact that the industry was full of pitfalls that would expertly uncover one's foibles. He had used his experience with _The After Hours_ as somewhat of a cautionary tale, and the atmosphere of his class, while on-topic, was one that had accustomed itself to poking fun at ability and history. He would rather promote a bit of teasing regarding those various levels of writerly Hell through which that show had taken him, than risk his students one day falling into the same catastrophe. As a teacher, Emery had decided to place himself on the chopping block as a case study, which benefitted not only his students, but his sense of life. It was easier to laugh at one's mistakes when others laughed at your side, and the students were learning something quite real.

"I see," Emery said of the jibe, "Well, having come down on me so hard with that bit of insight, I feel I should reciprocate the gesture, and come down on you as well. With an assignment. And a big one, for a change. I want an Act I that would open a half-hour show. If you've been paying attention and doing your reading, you should know what that entails. Now, I'll be looking for a couple of different things this time around. Stick with the pilot style, for one. Full introductions. Yes?"

"Do you want a full ten minute act, or trimmed out for commercials?"

"I want the full ten, so you have room to cut down to eight, which you'll be doing after you turn it in. Now listen: Last time, I was looking for directives, and most of you were able to get a good hold on the basics. Keep it up. This time, however, I'm going to be looking for some very specific things beyond your dialogue or your directives. For one, your scene details. Everything takes place somewhere, and people need to know the pertinent details of that. I want you to keep an eye on where your act takes place, and I want you to express it simply, with a few crucial details. Only a few. We've covered how that occurs, so now I want to see you implement it. Let me see where your scenes take place clearly. Next week, I'm going to be your producer and I'm going to be hard because you're over-budget. I might tell you that your scenes can't take place where you have them, and ask you to rewrite them. Hint hint."

"Is that going to be an assignment?" one student asked.

"Yes, but don't worry about that yet. For this assignment, I want an Act I, strong settings detailed well, and I'll be looking for your lead-off. You can write whatever you please, but I want to see a lead-off that can effectively summon the second act. Look to your references and keep the two Chayefsky scripts in mind when thinking over your lead-off. Both are good examples done in distinctly different ways. Come up with your own, if you can. That's it. I've got a handout to give you with more details."

FADE TO:

EXT. AN ITHACA STREET - AFTERNOON

A busy New York street with much commotion and myriad people.

Freeze-frame of daily commerce. There are cars in mid-motion, several red traffic lights in the distance. There are a few people paused walking along the sidewalk and we can see a small, purposeful tree present in a pre-designated square in the sidewalk's face, a small grating around its base. We see a SMALL MAN in the distance who is not frozen in time, navigating around people and ceased cars, making his way toward the camera. When he draws closer, we see that the small man is the nine-year-old child of EMERY ASHER, in a miniature black suit, hair slicked back, young and with much energy in his step. He establishes himself in the range of monologue, somewhat near the camera in order that his head and upper body match the frame.

CHILD ASHER:

Hi. It's me. I'm bored, you know. In a way I once would have thought was ridiculous, but boring is okay for adults. I'm 49, and I've even outlived my dad. Boring is okay. It's better than other things. I'm happy that I'm not the same me. I'm Mr. Asher now, a teacher, and I'm not _The Other Side_ guy at all. My skin looks better, did you notice? Los Angeles was hot and weathered me a little. This is better. I don't know that a person should always live in the sunlight without the yucky weather, too. I could be wrong. But I feel better, and everyone seems okay now.

We see him turn then and wave a greeting at all of Ithaca.

CHILD ASHER:

(returning attention to us)

I can do that every day. Because I live here.

We see another ASHER enter frame then, from the left, to stand beside the first. This is an adult Asher, host from _The After Hours_ , in his mid-forties and wearing his brown suit, voice a touch scratchy from smoking.

AFTER HOURS ASHER:

New York is nice. It hasn't changed much in the layout, or even the people, but it's not the place I know from the past. But why would it be? Beth... well, you should see her. She's happy, and the girls are doing just fine. Viv doesn't like her new high school so much. It's only for a few months, anyway. Teaching isn't as satisfying as I thought, but I do like it. It's a new thing for me. Then again, I escaped to it, so it has more value to me than it would have before. Oh, and we're supposed to be getting snow soon! Beth can't wait.

At this, the AFTER HOURS ASHER turns to the CHILD ASHER.

AFTER HOURS ASHER:

Say, I'm hungry. You? Let's go have lunch somewhere.

We then see a third Asher enter frame on the right. This is _The Other Side_ Asher, dressed just as the CHILD ASHER is, but for his own, adult size. He's smoking and grinning.

OTHER SIDE ASHER:

Are you two heading to lunch? I know a keen place. Near the CBS 30th Street Studio.

AFTER HOURS ASHER:

That place is gone.

OTHER SIDE ASHER:

Oh. Well, I'm open to ideas. Pick a place. But we should definitely call Beth and see if she wants to go.

CHILD ASHER:

She's so pretty.

OTHER SIDE ASHER:

Oh yes, but we really haven't seen her much lately. She might be a little angry at us.

AFTER HOURS ASHER:

She's not angry. It's us. We're the angry ones.

OTHER SIDE ASHER:

Huh. Well, I might be a little angry, but it's worth it.

CHILD ASHER:

I'm not mad at all. I like myself. Don't you?

OTHER SIDE ASHER:

Of course. A man should like himself, otherwise, why be alive?

AFTER HOURS ASHER:

No. Somebody has to like you, but it doesn't have to be you, yourself. And maybe it shouldn't be.

CHILD ASHER:

(frowns)

Well, I'm hungry. Let's call her.

CUT TO:

A RESTAURANT INTERIOR. We see current EMERY (the instructor) and BETH eating lunch in fast-forward. We cut to THE SUN rising higher in the sky, then back to the couple walking about in A SHOP. EMERY spots a newer electric typewriter and chats with BETH about it. Still in fast-forward, we then cut to THE SUN going down, behind the horizon. From here, we cut to a LIVING ROOM INTERIOR. This is likely the Asher house. We see the couple watching television. After a short while, BETH exits the frame, not to return. EMERY sits for a while on his own. We then cut to A STUDY. There is a desk and we see EMERY sit down at it. We return to normal time-speed now, and watch as EMERY begins going over a stack of papers that he has extracted from his briefcase. He seems tired.

MATCH CUT TO:

The time-honored concern of grading papers. A volume of white pages and black ink that soaked his evenings in both ire and whimsy. The amount of time this act dissolved from his life had been overwhelming at first, but his knack for creating and maintaining a week's regimen had transposed well enough for his collegiate duties. Sunday night was paper-grading night, though he would also grade the last of these papers during the two-hour break between his courses the following morning, provided office visits by students did not become unwieldy. Having his office hours to himself was seldom the case; his students enjoyed picking his brain about the 'governs and regale' of television. They were somewhat able to do this during class, but Emery was more personable and mentor-like in his office. He was able to remove a bit of pretense from himself when outside of a classroom.

The assignments he was going over were unfinished scripts, required first acts from his class. These scripts were frivolous in general, and often radically misaligned with anything a network would tolerate, but there was talent here and there, and a few possessed an ever-present willingness to be shaped. His students did grasp the technicality involved, and most had taken to directives and marks with swiftness. The usual trouble was in the creative aspect, in scene construction, pacing, the division of characters and behaviors over an arc of three acts, and in how to present a story with a certain detail while not over-detailing, and without falling to that slightly safer realm of being vague in description. Most of the stories were not interesting, thus far, but two of them had charmed him. Some of these students were built for the short story, and some quite obviously were more suited to live theater, but they were all trying to write the teleplay, and a few were gaining ground. The teleplay system was, at times, a willingness to follow subjective rules and gauges, and teaching a person to recognize those and utilize an imagination was more difficult than barking out what the typewriter needed to know regarding margin, spacing, centering rules, when to use capitalization, and which way it was expected a writer flush left or right.

He had time to write. In Los Angeles, as a professional writer of the industry, he had found himself buried in commitments, and then cut loose for strange spells of unemployment. He had written through all of this, and heavily, but there had never been enough time to write for himself, to try new things out of contracts and money. That time now existed, and he was using it. He continued working over his attempts at theater, failed as they were, and now considered his difficulty working in that medium as a humorous sort of curse, one he might eventually break to marvelous effect, if he worked at it enough.

For several terms, he taught and lectured, giving out his assignments and changing them here and there. It was a routine sort of life, but there were always things afoot, events in the making, situations to look forward to and scenarios to get past. Though he had attempted to sever any connection to working in the television industry outside of teaching, he still wrote occasional scripts for television, sending these out from his perch in New York, a small hope in him for the occasional acceptance, but in no means believing he would ever have the reception he had achieved earlier in his life. He had entered into his second year of teaching and still felt utterly new and novice, and he would be fifty years old in but a month. Starting a new career so late felt strange, but he was better off, and his marriage was a new entity. The Asher household seemed fond of its occupants again. While he was not past the age at which his fire felt to have dimmed, either physically or mentally, he was at an age by which he felt secure in his abilities and accepting of his station, which was, after all the heckling and trouble, all the bad contracts and ostracizing opinions, quite amicable and useful.

He was in good health, as was Beth, and they were enjoying New York, which carried a brisk flavor in its air but without the fight-or-flight eagerness of Hollywood. The difference was in an appetite for business. Both cities had a strong one, but the eastern city seemed well-fed, while the western city reached for every morsel in sight, fat-fingered and groping at every dish on the table. New York was governed by the suit and the briefcase. Los Angeles was governed by presumption and the loudness of rumor.

Emery was, in a sense, retired from television, and had, but one year back, embarked on a more certain career. For this, he discerned there could be no better place for him than his old, early stomping-ground of New York City. He had walked within it much, knew which way the grains fell, and could now relax more, watching the city unfold and alter its form here and there. The city felt as if a foundation for him, somewhat like the university, and had the atmosphere of a menopausal entity that held its occasional wisdoms in high regard. He was thankful that leaving Los Angeles had proven easy. This had been matter of choosing a date and packing for it, a trip east to secure a place in which to live, then a long, long drive.

He felt to be a different man here. Hollywood's television sub-species had been rushed and young, thousands upon thousands of people continually trying to reign their city in, keep it's frantic pace from devouring itself, but New York felt confident in its place and time, and knew when to take a weekend. He was neither retired nor newly embarked, in truth, but the sensations of these things were present, and they gave one a wholesome sense of being. The commercials were over and the final act was beginning. It was based on what had come before it, and to Emery, what had come before this third act in the script of his life had been an excellent and well-lived series of large things.

What a final act he had been given, a scene construction he had created, and could now have out. Teaching. Being alone again with Beth. Daughters in college. Then retirement. Grandchildren! He was a character with a powerful lead-off, and he was primed for all the culminations to come. Perhaps decades of them.

**Chapter Thirty-Nine**

Emery woke in a dismal state, the tugging of panic from its ream, a gasp dropping from his mouth. Beth stirred beside him, giving her husband an awkward look of confusion before promptly returning to sleep. She had discerned correctly, in her five a.m. blur, that nothing was happening. A hundredth nightmare. Beth knew he disliked being comforted after these, and her habit was now to leave him be, find sleep, and perhaps ask him about it later if he seemed too-long disturbed. Emery sat up in bed a moment, breathing and glancing about the room. There were comforting articles here and there, the usual conglomeration of decoration and materials. Shelves with books and the odd trinket. Bed-stand. Blankets atop sheets atop two people in the spousal arrangement. What time was it?

He sighed and left the bed, cracking his neck and rotating his shoulders to loosen them. Over the years, these nightmares had become a sort of quiet friend. They were shocking and somewhat horrifying, but they had conjoined with his past and his fears so expertly, that at fifty years old, he would have felt a bit hollow were they to cease.

The standard approach of these ill dreams was a hungry one. At times, he was simply back in a gulch with the bayonet, beneath the rain while engaging the Japanese. In his dreams, he forgot that he had dreams. The terrible parts of his past were, for a short duration, the present, and his future of marriage, parenting, and working for a living in his trade seemed as if a strange and alternate past. He was married when he stabbed the Japanese man in the gulley, had a daughters in college. He watched Eddie Dodder get crushed by the great crate from the sky, a thing that seemed near instant in occurrence, and he watched this happen not as a soldier, but as a man who wrote stories of speculation. He was fifty in his dreams. A human's state when the eyes were closed most was a filthy twist of nature, and it did not abide the laws of time or age.

After breakfast, he left the house for the campus. With no class and a Saturday before him, he needed to use some time playing catch-up on the submissions of his students, and especially rebuilding the system of his office and schedule, which had fallen lax in the previous weeks. Teaching and grading were not enough; these things required measures, and grades required sorting, recording, and ultimately, projecting. Records and filing needed to be settled, and so he had chosen to deplete a portion of the weekend satisfying these things, getting his hobbit hole back into running order. Two or three hours would suffice to finish his grading and reorganize his office.

He loathed a clumsy workspace, an attitude he had adopted from his years of intense regimen and work. He preferred a familiar, efficient setting, whether it was the opening of a script or an office at the university, and the cleanliness of these things had a smoothing effect over his thoughts, just as palpable as a shot of brandy and just as effective as learning the craft of optimism. He preferred to write and grade while in a contented mood, not a rushed or flustered one.

As Emery often left the door to his office open while he worked (there was trouble with the circulation of air in the building), Gary Bond noticed him while walking from his own small office. An excitable geologist and outspoken angler, Gary knew more about fish and the Earth's construction than most mathematicians knew about numbers. This was somewhat _all_ Gary knew, but he was friendly and had been a good person to jabber with from time to time. Emery had, in his first term, begun the process of forming opinions about most of the faculty members he encountered. Opinions on one's colleagues were necessary nearly so much as fact, and the very fabric of the academic institution could not have survived without such opinions. Emery's opinion of Gary Bond had begun on a good note, and had only been enriched with time. Unlike many professors, Mr. Bond did not seem to have his nose so high in the air when in the presence of basic instructors.

"No life?" Gary asked.

"You're one to talk."

The two chatted for a few minutes, covering all the inscrutable topics advisable between passing instructors. The approach of examinations. The weather. The school. The small offices. After this bit of cursory hello was over, Gary made a move of friendship that Emery did not expect, and invited the script instructor to visit a 'hidden lake' for some prime trout fishing. Emery was touched.

"Well, I've never been much for fishing, not since I was a kid, but I'd give it a shot," Emery agreed.

"Good enough for me. Next weekend?"

"I can do that, I think. Hey, let me ask you something, Gary: Is there a specific, geological reason why the trout will be more plentiful at this supposedly secret spot of yours? Probably something to do with sediment or whatnot?" Emery asked.

"Am I really that much of a jackass?"

"No. Yes. Well, no."

Gary snorted and shook his head.

"Sadly, yes, there _is_ a palpable reason why the trout are plentiful, and yes, the reason _is_ somewhat geological."

"Tell me this benefactor is sediment. It's always about sediment with you types."

"It's not sediment. This time. I won't bore you with the details."

"Thank you, sir."

"You can owe me. Hey listen, my son's coming to visit, too, next week, and I'm pretty sure he'll want to come out with us. At least I hope he will. Teaches European History for the junior college in Santa Rosa. Out in California."

"Hey, I almost spoke there once. Couldn't get the time, though," Emery said.

"Oh yeah? I like the campus. Has a good feel. Anyway, I figure Jason will come along. You'll like him, he writes poetry."

"Oh, I see."

"Hey, you wanna feel old all of a sudden?"

"No. But go ahead and try it; I was old at twenty-five."

"I watched _All the System_ when it aired that first time, and I was sitting on a couch with my kid. He was in high school."

"Ah, got it. Same kid that now teaches in Santa Rosa."

"Yeah, but that's not what's gonna make you feel old. I got more."

"Out with it, you snake," Emery said.

" _His_ son, see. My _grandson_ , Arnold. Just moved out here to stay with Annie and I. My grandson is gonna be in your class next term."

Emery glanced up at Gary and let his mind fall to numbers. High school in '55... had a kid... kid goes off to college in '74... The numbers connected in a way that made Emery's stomach heavy.

"Oh, son of a bitch," he muttered.

"There you go. Welcome to the old folks home, Asher."

"Christ. His name's Arnold Bond, then?"

"Yeah."

"Well, next term I'll be sure to destroy him."

"I approve. It'll be good for him. He's a bit of a stoner."

There was a brief pass of time wherein the geology instructor sighed before he let his smile surface.

"Okay, I can't help it. Yes. There's something to do with sediment at the lake. But there's another big reason the fishing is good at my secret spot. One somebody like _you_ might even be able to grasp."

"Beyond the wonderful sediment?"

"Yeah: No other fishermen; it's secret, remember?"

With a lesser appetite, lunch in solitude was not a good enough reason to stay out, so Emery drove home after leaving the campus. A day off was supposed to be a day in which one might catch up on the internal life, and do so in the most usual means. In this function, Emery had other people to which he belonged. The week of finals would begin Monday, and he would be administering his exam on that first day. Having caught up and situated himself at the academic term's end, he could afford to relax for the remainder of the weekend.

The mail had come, and after pouring himself a glass of juice, he lit a cigarette, settled an ashtray on his lap on the couch, and proceeded to read the letters. William was doing well, according to his scrawled handwriting and overuse of the word 'cultivating'. Both brothers, no doubt having gained only the most eager of traits from their father, owned a preference for keeping busy and viewed slothfulness with a particular sort of odium. This of course had stemmed from the always-in-motion habits of Henry Asher, but unlike their father, they would have time to retire and live a more relaxed life for a time. Henry had died at a mere forty-eight years of age. First William, and then Emery, had outlived the man. This was a strange thing one never quite thought about at the front of consciousness. The notions this idea brought forward came from a deeper, less tangible place.

The difference in retirement would be in Emery's attempt to continue teaching as long as he could, while William was banking on a full retirement on every level. He worked hard, and would for the next eight years, at which time he would cut himself off from his career at the root. What did he want to do after this sharp change of life? Write a book. Emery had aspirations of doing the same, at some point, and a part of him wondered if he might offer to do so _with_ his brother, that they might write a book together. This could be a good way to get back into regular interaction with William, an interplay that had, over the previous decade, waned into the occasional telephone call or letter, two or three times a year. Of course, William might dislike the idea of writing with Emery. They were still siblings, after all, and both were writers, and any similarities they shared only seldom outweighed the vicissitudes of their differing approaches and wants.

The younger brother snuffed out his cigarette, thought of having another, and put it off a spell while he opened the letter that had drawn his attention most. It had a return address stamped with a logo for a production company, which meant business. Emery had, in the few previous years, formed the habit of saving business mail for last. He opened the letter and read, a sense of nuisance running through him.

Bule Rowe, the producer who had, 15 years back, replaced Sol Jamison on _The Other Side_ during the third season, had his own production company now. It was a small one similar to Fairway Productions, which Bernie Dozier had run for several years. This new company, simply called _Rowe Productions_ , had shot a pilot for a show now consigned to a season, but the head writer had recently quit, leaving Rowe in a strict bind. He was contacting Emery to offer the job. It could be accomplished long distance, through mail and over the telephone, and would require only 30% of the scripts to air. Creative control belonged to Emery, if he wanted it. There was a moment through which Emery smiled a broad, internal arc through his body and mind, a moment that ended slowly but with certainty. He was done with television, no matter how racy a deal came his way. He had spent a good portion of his life building within that sort of work, developing the skill and eagerness necessary to move within and beyond it. He had honed the smarts to innovate it or simply capture it for short durations. These traits and integrations had not been enough. Emery had learned a staunch facet of himself in reckoning television and its production: He had never, in all the years of success and failure, through all the stories, themes, conceits, and the busy, second-by-second motions of writing for the public, developed the _stomach_ for it.

Emery sighed when he reached the last paragraph, reading over the name of the head writer who had abandoned the show Rowe was offering: Calvin Moffat. Emery shook his head. He could not pretend to understand Calvin's reason for leaving a show so early on, but Emery deferred to trust. If Moffat found something so wrong with a production that he might leave it so quickly, after obviously pitching it, gaining creative control, and securing a deal with Bule Rowe in the first place, there had to be a sound motive. Calvin had declined to write for _The After Hours_ because he could read between lines expertly, and could detect that particular whirlwind of shit the industry often fostered, and he could do so with a practiced sort of sixth sense. Emery possessed a lesser degree of this skill, but it was a sense strong enough that it had made his levels of hell on that show all the worse. He understood the intricacies of that snare _The After Hours_ had once snapped around his foot. Emery made up his mind to find Calvin's new telephone number and give the writer a call, get the story and learn what happened, out of fun and friendship. There was no chance that Emery would concede to accepting Rowe's offer, however. A single episode, possibly (depending on what Calvin thought), but an entire show?

CUT TO:

HOST ASHER, in his Other Side suit and with his slicked-back hair, is standing a stage, a few feet from a small, clear, glass podium. He's holding a microphone. We also see a Bachelor, CALVIN MOFFAT, standing near him. CALVIN is holding an index card. We CUT TO a larger shot, indicating that we're seeing a brightly lit game show, the sort filmed live with an audience. We do not see the audience, however. A happy little jingle plays. We've just come back from commercial.

HOST ASHER:

Welcome back to The Television Game. We're nearing our final round. Standing near me is Calvin from Los Angeles, and he has a decision to make. We've been waiting for this moment. Now, Calvin, you've questioned your three, prospective dates and they've had some intriguing answers. It's come down to this. Are you ready?

CALVIN:

Yes, I'm ready.

HOST ASHER:

Then let's get to it! Final round, and it's all you.

We CUT TO a wide shot that shows the entirety of the stage. CALVIN is situated in a bright, open portion of the stage, which runs far left to center. He's standing beside HOST ASHER. While ASHER has a podium, CALVIN does not, and simply stands there, appearing nervous but excited. From center to far right are three partitions, each containing a wall-to-wall bench with a producer sitting behind it, each facing the live audience. The design is to allow the audience to see all the people on stage, while HOST ASHER and CALVIN, the contestant, cannot see the producers in the partitions.

CALVIN glances at his index card.

CALVIN:

(Feigning cheer)

Uh, Producer #1, you said that your favorite thing about dealing with writers was, and I quote, "seeing a guy with his dick so far into his own mouth that he can't even see who's fucking him."

The audience laughs at this. We CUT for a moment to Producer #1, FRANK GILL.

GILL:

What can I say, I guess I like it dirty when we get there.

The audience gives a staple "woo!" and a few hoots at the raciness of this first Producer.

GILL:

But at any other time, mind you, I expect you to be docile. You'll be a good little housewife, understand?

CALVIN:

Would you say you know how to run a show?

GILL:

Yeah yeah, feed the cow, eat the meat.

CALVIN:

Producer #2, your answers didn't do much for me, and while you had some potent things to say, you never really answered any of my questions outright. If 'absence makes the heart grow fonder', how fond am I going to be?

We see Producer #2, BULE ROWE, rolls his eyes.

ROWE:

Christ, who gives a shit?

CALVIN:

Would you say you know how to run a show?

ROWE:

I've been with some of the best shows out there. Just don't forget my golden rule: I put out once she's worth it. Never before.

Audience murmurs a little. ROWE has not gained their favor much.

CALVIN:

Producer #3, you seemed to go back and forth between calling yourself things like "an engine of being", and then self-deprecating yourself with words like "street-sweeper of Smalltown". You consider yourself a recognized genius, yet also a grub street worker. I'm still puzzled about it. Can you clarify any of that for me?

Producer #3, ED BAIRD, his statements seeming to alternate between cockiness and awkwardness, speaks into the microphone. He has a small bag of chips in his free hand.

BAIRD:

Well, there's nothing I can't handle, and that means you, too. I think real writers are above everyone else; I know that because I respect real writers, and I study them, because I'm a real writer. I try hard, but it's actually pretty easy. You all talk about integrity and compromise but that's all amateur stuff. I fix the work of writers because I can, and sometimes I fix the hell out of it. I'm a literary janitor.

See, you bum me out, because you're supposed to be writing for your employers, not the unknown. The ones that sign your paycheck are the actual audience, and they know how talented I am. Talent is when can do what you're supposed to better than the next guy over. It's like you don't care about what you do. But I DO care, and so do they, and I work at all hours but...

(pauses to eat from the bag of chips)

...listen, old-timer, if you want me to come over to your house so you can cook me dinner, great. But I won't eat it. The only cooking I eat is my own, and I'm sure you wouldn't understand my tastes anyway because I've spent a lot of time practicing what they should be, unlike you.

Audience is quiet here, a little confused. We hear a solitary clap and then nothing. CUT back to CALVIN:

CALVIN:

(sighs)

Would you say that you know how to run a show?

BAIRD:

There's no such thing as a show, so definitely not. But there ARE people who make things for other people, and that divinity has rules, so then again, absolutely yes, you hack.

HOST ASHER:

Okay, Bachelor. It's time for you to make your decision and pick your producer. Do you choose Producer #1, Producer #2, or Producer #3?

CALVIN:

Can't I make a production company and just produce my own stories?

We hear much laughter from audience. HOST ASHER smirks.

HOST ASHER:

Not and still write them. We're almost out of time, Calvin. You have to make your choice now.

CALVIN:

Well, I don't want any of them. These Networks are wrathful. And all their generals have no care for me. I'm not picking one.

HOST ASHER:

Then you'd be forfeiting the grand prize.

CALVIN:

Fine. I don't want it. Your contestants are always a nightmare and your other bachelors spend their integrity like money in a grocery. Gore Vidal was right to get the fuck out of this game. Honestly, I think it's rigged for the ratings. I'm done with this show. I'll write books, instead. Occasional movies. A little freelance.

All three producers start laughing a little.

HOST ASHER:

Ah, good luck with that, Bachelor. We'll be watching. But not really.

The exit jingle begins and some multi-colored spotlights begin moving about quickly on the stage. It is energetic music.

HOST ASHER:

That's all the time we have this week. Thanks for playing, Calvin of Los Angeles.

(to audience, exuberant)

And thank YOU for tuning in to The Television Game!

The exit jingle rises in volume and we cut to several shots of the audience and various members of it, game show style. The audience is entirely comprised of humanoid insects and apes evolved from men. The quickly rolling credits are overlayed atop these cuts and scene. We see antennas flitting, mandibles chatting, and ape-men hooting as they wave their arms and fists in gestures of excitement. Several ape-men beat their chests, and we see a large spider sitting in one of the seats, its abdomen bent upward from the chair's position, shooting strands of silk all over itself in ecstacy.

CUT TO:

The workings of the machine. The mannerisms of contract. Television and an offer for creative control on a sinking show that had been abandoned by its own creator. This show had been shoved away by a man Emery considered a grand, longstanding cohort. Despite its better intentions, the letter had struck in him a good sense of balance, reinforcing the decisions he had made over the past several years. He knew where he was in life now. He felt steady and secure, no longer affected by the macerating, nerve-leeching velocity of the industry he had left behind. He was so thankful to be past the bestial obligations that cropped up with such ease there, the things that came for a man and punished him. That world was spiced with minor devils who only praised you to kick you. Emery would have rather made love to himself with sandpaper than take the reigns of the show being offered.

Another cigarette reached his lips and he lit with his free hand, setting the letter aside on the arm of the couch. He had an inhale and thought about the stubborn nature of resolve. People wedged themselves into various nooks and corners, trying to own those places, to set up a life in them and hold on to those properties as long as possible. Occasionally, if one was lucky, those nooks and corners might return the gesture, attempting to hold on to that rare individual who pleased them. Emery was a writer and an instructor. He had decided at the outset of his joining with the university that only one of these institutions in his life would have the luxury of calling him a staff member. His nook was fulfilled. His corner was open and had granted him a long view back. Part of changing one's life involved a release of things past, and this letter was the past come to dance awkwardly before him. To show him just how right he had been in retiring from television. He had gotten his smile out of the letter, and now it was time to set it aside and get to cooking dinner.

Emery wrote much, between classes and on most of his days off, usually in the late hours. He could not stop doing this any more than a wheel could stop rolling on a steep hill. There was simply too much momentum, and not writing felt like aberration. He had made some effort in writing less, considering his now but mild interest in publication and production, but going more than a few days without getting into his typewriter only gave him a sense of disorder. He had become, over the years, dependant on a specific state of learning, and without being in that state, he felt unnecessary. These stories were given exacting tasks, and he was using them to hone his craft, a knowledgeable sorting of the bulk talent he had utilized in previous years, and he had a familiarity with his writing that was stronger than it had ever been. In his mind, he had begun putting himself through his own class, really, as a student again. Most of these things were not to see the light of day, and certainly not designed for industry.

Writing was not an act, but a place. He had conjectured this for many years. Every piece of story or scene was as if a new room in his old, old home, and his comfort within this place, despite the rejection that came along for each of these new stories, was untroubled. These were likely his best works, and it did not bother him that very few individuals would ever see them. His plan was to collect them into book form, and perhaps publish them in his off-time, likely over a summer. In this way, he might let other people decide over time if they wanted to put something of his on a screen.

He no longer needed to search for a market that might pay him for his work. He had a job now, an invariant sense of employment that did not give enough room for doubt. Emery did not have to fight to keep this job, but simply do his best with it. What an easier place the world was when one simply needed to work hard, when a person was rewarded for his accountability and his tasks. Life was much more wondrous when you were gauged by what you did, and by your fellows, rather than what you did not do, and by that muzzy, opinionated mire of executive presaging and public retrospect. Rejections arrived in the mail, but these were inconstant and he did not stay long in their morass. He taught and paid his expenses and drove his car and loved his family, cooked certain nights away, wrote away the others. These were satisfying and no amount of rejection could dent the iron hide he had developed over the past decades, a mussel-shell material as thick in layers as he had lived in years.

A pounding emanated from beyond the house and Emery glanced up from the couch, through the glass door and into the back yard. The twilight obscured the shape of the fence, the outline of the bush near one corner, but Emery was able to see the thing when it hit the grass: A massive foot had stamped down into the short grass. A mastodon foot. This was followed by another and after several of these house-shaking pounds of weight against the ground, the animal had passed. Beth entered the living room then and turned on the television. He sat on the couch, staring into the back yard, cigarette between his fingers and a sensation of churning that slowly hovered over his eyes. She caught sight of her husband's flush complexion as she prepared to sit down on the couch beside him, noticed his blank face and stiff posture

"You okay?"

He stared into the back yard, at the footprint the mastodon had left behind, watching as Larry Belmont and Sol Jamison, who now stood near the fence, admired the deep print, occasionally glancing over at him and talking amongst themselves. The Japanese man, the one, entered the shot, waiting with patience, his gut torn open and hat knocked from his head. Eddie Dodder was there, wearing his uniform and boxing gloves, hunks of wood in his shoulders and head. They all existed in the back yard. It was their home. Then there was Maury, there was Emery's dear mother, Susa. Henry, his father, gave a small wave. They crowded into the yard and watched him with accusing eyes. He attempted to swallow and the action curdled in his throat, stuck there like a ball of plastic. There was a sound. A continuing sound. These people in his yard were not real, not true, not anymore, and he banished them. The cigarette fell from his fingers onto the couch cushion.

"Oh, damn it!" Beth said, quickly picking this up and brushing the dashed embers from the couch. She looked him over with agitation. He tried to mutter. There was no sound then but the one in his head. While waiting for him to respond, her attention diverted and she turned toward the kitchen to fetch a washcloth.

A moment of resolve. He quickly lifted his head, flung his arm out and his wrist nudged against her side. She looked down at him on the couch. The pressure in his head began to pound, footsteps of the great beast, stories spilling from his lips but lacking in every word. He simply looked up at her with a shaking lip and deep eyes, an expression that contained both fright and apology.

"Honey?"

She didn't know. The pounding started again. He frowned and, against the resolve of his body, stood up abruptly, his face streaked in red with his veins straining as if trying to pull air through cellophane. The footsteps of the beast were deafening. Her mouth opened and he bent back down, weakly knuckling himself onto the floor, then onto his side at the foot of the couch. His hand tried to reach his chest. The world grew unbearably hot, a tugging of panic from its ream. He rolled onto his back, his red face straining.

"EMERY!"

The mastodon's great foot stepped down on his chest. The crushing pressure forced the air from his lungs. The beast had finally found him and Emery had no saber. As the weight increased and the animal's cold intention bore down on its victim, Emery looked over at his wife and said nothing.

**Chapter Forty**

The trouble with having a substitute handle his final exams was not so much that his presence was needed, but that the substitute in question, Mrs. Culkin, functioned as an instructor of English 121 and an instructor in Expository Writing, and her expertise was with essays, research papers, and business documents. She had only a vague understanding of the material Emery taught. She ascertained that Emery's course was, at its heart, a writing course, and treated it as such. Her final exams tended to involve a month-long paper, which would come due just prior to the end of each term. Emery's final exam was not so traditional, and involved a more real-world situation, with much scrutiny. Mrs. Culkin simply had no experience with how he functioned.

His students were to first answer two short essay questions, and then each spend up to an hour concocting a single, acceptable scene given various details, and then follow this by the revision of a very short, sample, third act Emery would give them. These three endeavors would demonstrate whether a student had a passing knowledge of the class and amount of the medium covered. The entire examination could be undertaken quickly, or be given much attention, depending on the student. The questions were simple but contained a few layers of insight. The students were to accomplish this process of answering, writing, and revising, right there at their desks, in front of the boss, and in a manner stringently timed for a maximum of two hours. It was designed to simulate writing under pressure while retaining one's wits. This was not the sort of examination for which Emery's substitute had been prepared.

As the questions and sample had been put together several weeks prior, Mrs. Culkin needed only give the components of his final examination, in order, to his students, and then monitor the room. She had modified this, however. Mrs. Culkin had chosen to steer this process in a way he would have never approved. She handed out the examination questions, explained the writing portion (without giving the pertinent details), and then promptly left the room, neglecting to hand out the revision samples, thinking them unnecessary guides, and not an actual portion of the exam. She timed the students, but she had not remained present to dissuade cheating with conglomerate knowledge, and worst of all, she had neglected to administer the third portion of the exam.

The day had passed and now Emery had the problem of trying to deduce who had known the material, and who had simply talked it out with other students during the exam. Such deduction was subjective, however. He had to change his system much in order to approximate grades based on incomplete exams. His students had answered the two essay questions without problem. They had then each written a scene, as instructed, but due to having not been given the details of that scene, everyone had written something different, which meant that Emery no longer had the central gauge by which he had planned to grade these scenes. What had been a purposely constricting activity in the exam, designed to test his students' abilities with a particular function, had become an open, creative writing segment. Worse, no one had revised a sample act. This portion was supposed to be a third of the final exam, and it had not been administered.

Coronary thrombosis. His ticker had choked for a moment, a clog in a pipe, and landed him in the hospital for three days. He had undergone a heart attack, just like his father, and at nearly the same age. Unlike his father, Emery had survived. He was to have a bypass surgery, quit smoking, quit drinking, eat in accordance with a specifically frugal diet, and possibly, if these things were managed in an appropriate fashion, remain alive for an indeterminate time. He hadn't had a cigarette in four days and the stress was overwhelming. His lungs pulled at the air as if urging him to thicken it, and his mind drifted into odd tangents.

Cigarettes clouded into all of his thoughts, and he wanted one so badly he had even found himself smoking in a dream, the third night. Worse was the anger that, until this surrender to health, had been kept at bay by his heavy intake of nicotine. Now that his body was going without this efficient salve for his stress, the troubles of his life seemed suddenly unbearable and confounding. He was short with Beth and Vivian, had told Rebecca over the phone that she had better study harder or else she might end up a prostitute, and had cruelly dismissed much of what his brother said over the phone during the hospital stay.

His heart had attacked him, though the result of this had been a quick and defeating blow to his sense of mortality. His concern had gained an electric sensibility, and worry over his potential end was a stalwart parasite, but thankfully, it was not yet time for his family to pick out a casket. He was doing well, but nothing felt correct. Everything was off. He incessantly thought of smoking, a needle-like jab at his senses that came on quite suddenly, and often. Due to the withdrawal and sudden change in life, he found it difficult to focus on any particular thing for very long, and was somewhat blocked on page.

His first hour home, he had sat in his study, occasionally glancing at the spot on his desk where his ashtray had been located only two days prior. He had paid nearly eighty dollars for it, an antique from a South Carolina church during the Civil War. Now, it was in a box in the garage with the others, awaiting the yard sale Beth was planning. The bourbon had been removed from the house as well. Beth had never been much for drink, and had no troubles at all adapting to a life of utter sobriety. Emery could not adjust so leisurely. Despite his foul mood and cantankerous thoughts regarding Mrs. Culkin, and his nicotine-deprived sense of retribution and anger against anyone who had ever bothered him (and especially himself), Beth somehow remained cordial. She attempted to be somewhat soothing when around him. She was trying to help, but the unfortunate nature of Emery's addicted mind seemed bent on turning him into a discomfited, flaring ass. Adding pestilence to famine, he recognized the whiny surliness of his actions and it only made him more petulant.

He had work to do however, as the deadline for submitting his grades was quite near, and while the attack had knocked him out of his regimen for only a handful of days, they were the worst possible days to have missed. His students had fulfilled their obligations in the academic arrangement, and after having the work of this brought to his house, he needed to execute his portion of that contract. His students' averages depended on his final grading, and he was expected to get this completed on time. The deadline for this was nearly at end. Mrs. Culkin had unwittingly stunted his grading process more than the heart attack had.

"How goes the mountain?" Beth asked, entering the room slowly to check in with her husband and discern his general mood. Was he relaxed, even for a short duration?

"I'm about half-way up. I think they discerned everything well, in the overall sense of it, but I'd like to strangle the blood from Eve Culkin's oversized head."

"I don't understand why she did that. You sent over instructions and you were very clear."

"I'll come off like a prick if I bring her up on it, too. This is no good for anyone. At least I have good students. There _are_ quite a few this term that... well, that aren't talented, even a little, but talent or not, most did learn the material, and they seem to have caught the drift well enough to take a test."

"Maybe you're being too critical. It's only school. They're kids, mostly. You remember."

"Well, I _am_ too critical, but good god, think about the networks these kids will encounter if they make it."

"That's true, I suppose."

"Many of them don't know how to type. This is something that baffles me."

"They can't type?"

"Nearly half. I'm thinking of making it a prerequisite starting in the spring. I'll emphasize it by making it biblical. 'For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If any writer is not willing to type, let him not eat. Sayeth the Instructor, 'Completion of the typing course with a C or better.' Modern scripting is specifically formatted around the typewriter. I don't understand some of these students."

The attack had been mild, but this term applied only to the long run. In the immediate realm of his life, the heart attack had nothing about it he would describe as mild. It had been devastatingly painful and terrifying. He was scheduled for a coronary bypass in less than a month, and after the operation, all would be well, if he maintained a good diet and kept off his vices.

"You know, changing what I eat is not overwhelming, and losing bourbon isn't as troubling as I would have suspected it to be, but dropping the damn cigarettes..."

"I know."

"It's like they're all I can think about."

The writer's block that had surfaced could have been based on his attack and the subsequent dread it had inspired in him, but Emery suspected the cigarettes were a larger culprit. He had never written without a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray, without the effects of nicotine pulsing about in his brain. He was gathering up his grades and figures while the withdrawal from his drug continually trickled at the edge of his thoughts. He could manage this leaky-pipe bother, enough to complete the present task, but whenever Emery attempted to write, his addiction's minor dribble became a floodtide.

The writer's block was frustrating though not so destructive as he would have previously thought, and the relief that came from ignoring his scripts for a time had resulted in a certain seed having been planted: Perhaps he did not need to write so much. A project or two every now and then might suffice and let him write as he enjoyed, but perhaps this did not need to occur each night, and possibly not even each week. He did have a different job, after all.

Emery's prolificacy had always been a great boon to him, and he had operated at a level far more productive than most. He had been somewhat obsessed in his youth, and perhaps he still was, but the heart attack had given him a notion previously foreign to him: He might no longer need to be as he had been, or compete with himself and his past work. He could settle down and write here and there, and this would still keep him at a general level. Working over a script every so often, maybe one or two a month, would feel as if a slow crawl to him, but he could do that and still have an output comparable to the usual writer.

He finished his grades and sent them out into the world. The instructor was worried over the repercussions of a D he had been forced to give young Anthony Fascinelli, a student he admired and that had remarkable talent, but who had not taken the course seriously. The worlds of television and cinema were beginning to glance at the grades of those who took scriptwriting courses. This was somewhat of an experiment, to see if the schools could serve as ranching grounds in which these two industries might begin to shop for the few pedigrees in a particular breed. It did not look good. The trade-oriented aspect of his course meant that a low grade could feasibly alter one's entry into a career with a much more palpable hand than having not done well in basic English or certain other classes.

The bent of a script was story, in that a good writer could navigate good stories and give insights and reason to the nature of a tale or drama, and make a script of it, but this was not necessarily the initial deciding factor from a network or Hollywood point of view. They first glanced to see if a writer knew what a script was supposed to look like, and if that writer had any experience. Starting out on a career in that world, many of Emery's students would only be able to claim school as experience, and a D in scriptwriting was an embarrassment if that was to be your trade, especially if that D came from a recognizable name that happened to have been given five Emmies.

Emery's course was strongly pertinent in the formation of careers for those students that planned to enter the realm of screenwriting. His approach was blue-collar, and as real-world as was possible in a classroom, which was only ever a vague pantomime of reality.

He did not want to give Anthony Fascinelli a low grade, but the young man had spent his term stoned or unavailable, smart-assing with other students, and turning in very little work. The few things he did submit were superb, and he had a raw talent that reminded Emery of a young Larry Belmont. The assignments the student submitted indicated an innate understanding of the medium, but these completed assignments were too few and the days in which Fascinelli showed up for class were utterly noncontinuous. This was a bit of a conundrum to Emery. Should he give the young writer the D, based on his lack of completed assignments for class, or keep a more open mind in grading, due to Fascinelli's obvious ability to write a script? Emery was in the midst of a talented young writer, a writer that could have aced the course without expending much energy at all, but a student that had fucked-off for most of the term. Which was worse, wasted talent or arrogant disregard? Fascinelli could have used a good punch from Frank Gill.

A low grade ran the risk of making it difficult for Fascinelli to find work, yes, but a low grade _now_ might save him from being fired from a show later in his career. The young man could always retake the class and repair the problem, as well. Perhaps he should. Yes, that would be Emery's resolve with Anthony Fascinelli. The young writer needed to wake up if he was going to do anything with his skill. Better to get a slap now than when a family and rent was on the line. Emery had decided to be academically fair, treat the student as a student, and not a writer. He would have a talk with the young man; advise him that the course be taken again. He hoped Fascinelli would do so. It was a shame to have to give him a D when he obviously understood the material, but the young man had earned that grade, which made it a necessary shame.

With the removal of drink and cigarettes, the change in his meals, and continuing work at the university, Emery needed to be a different sort of man than he had been, especially now that his very life required it. He wanted nothing from television, and hoped it would require nothing of him. These would be the years when he could grow old and watch his children marry, become a grandfather, and live a relaxed life. There would be no more soul-twisting bog of celebrity, or anti-celebrity, no more false or true acclaim, no alleged or actual failure. There would be no more thinking about these things, fidgeting with his esteem and sense of will, and no more over-analysing what he was, or had done. It was enough, and he was enough. He had worked hard and it was over. Let the kids do the writing, make the shows, run the workings of the screen. He considered himself an elder at this point. A younger elder, yes, and one that wanted the respect he felt he was due, while also being compassionate toward his successors. It would be a tragedy to let all the knowledge and experience he had endured go to waste. The trick was to teach it to his students, term after term, to prepare them, that they might better the industry. He was doing his part, he deduced, in bettering his trade, long after his trade had shoved him away on claims of bad breath.

The month trudged along, his senses honed from the lack of cigarettes and the idleness of his non-writing hands. He kept a constant, running alarm in his mind regarding his heart. Was that a little pain? Did that brief flit indicate something was wrong again? Perhaps his hand was numb... _Honey, squeeze my wrist here... No, harder._ Maybe he should sleep with the phone beside him. It was a particularly unique horror to be afraid of his own organs. He visualized the heart, beating in his chest, shoving blood through his body per schedule like a clock; he imagined it stopping with a tremor. What a nightmare. Perhaps most insidious was that a thrombotic attack like that kept a person from being able to speak much, to call out for help. It was cruel; the pain struck and the victim went somewhat mute.

He had given Beth the notice to watch him closely. Being that the heart attack had occurred in a quiet mode, and had kept him from speaking the thing, Emery created a procedure they could use in the future: If he gave her the peace sign, or if she heard him in another room kicking or slamming his fist against something, a table, the floor, the kitchen counter, the dashboard of the car, anything, she was to consider it another heart attack and either call an ambulance or get him straight to the hospital as fast as the universe would let her. While this code had at first been designed half in humor, as the time of his surgery drew near, he became much more serious about keeping near to her.

Emery was going under the knife two days after the start of the new term, and he had no choice but to use another substitute to handle the first two weeks of class. This was regrettable, but little else could be done. The doctors said he would not be returning to work for a month, but the doctors did not know him very well. A month's time was somewhat of an eternity, and he was a strong healer. He bounced back after cancellations, soared quickly through the seasonal flu, had won 16 out of his 19 boxing bouts in the ARMY, and the doctors could ask the shrapnel scarring in his knee what its effect had been on him if they wanted an idea of how long he tended to stay down when struck. Two weeks and he would be back in front of his students. New ones. And as a new man, himself.

The substitute would pose little trouble this time around, as the assignments were clear and he was able to get his old friend Martin Ward to teach the two weeks as a favor. The university had not approved of this arrangement, but Martin was a classic New Yorker, knew the business in and out, from many levels, and had lectured at school workshops numerous times. Martin also had the benefit of a master's degree (though he had earned it nearly thirty years prior, and in atmospheric science, of all things).

Emery was persuasive with the school, and after some campaigning via phone and letters, the school made room for the special arrangement. Martin was excited to take part. Emery had also made up his mind that, after the surgery and his obnoxious recovery process, he and Martin might spend some time together. Fishing with Gary Bond had been relaxing, but while Gary did have the feel of a good acquaintance, he did not give off that energy of being a cohort, which was a sort of sensation between two people that Emery valued much in his rare friendships. Martin, after all the years they had been apart, still felt like an accomplice. Each of the two men had a sense of ire in their humor. It came from all the maneuvering they had both done in the screenwriting world. They had a common master, and for a long time, a common enemy, which would always inject camaraderie into their skulls. Having Ward take on the first two weeks of his classes would likely prove a good idea, and save Emery from having to do much fixing and patching once he was able to return to his students.

Only two weeks prior, he had finalized a deal for two collections of his early works to be placed in book format, mostly scripts from _The Other Side_ , but there would be a few handpicked stories from his other projects. These were books that would be thick in width, and it was hoped they might fetch an equally thick price. There were to be three volumes to complete the project, but they were less for the public than for people involved in the industry, or individuals with a special interest. They would not have a large print run, but would be profitable in the short run.

The hospital bills were going to be exorbitant, but the books, his royalties, and his wage from the university would handle these enough, while keeping Rebecca and Vivian's tuition up, though it was going to come close to breaking his account. All was settled in the basest way, but with money coming in regularly, the Ashers would survive it. He was not certain anyone would read the books, as his name had undergone quite a tarnishing over the years. There was also the fact that his first book, so long ago, had not done well. There were still fans of _The Other Side_ , however, and the show had gone into sporadic reruns over the last decade, proving that it was, by public demand, a little beloved here and there. He wished Larry could have seen that.

As the day of his surgery approached, the moment when he would be forced unconscious and have his chest opened up, his fear of going beneath the surgeon's profession escalated wholeheartedly. Surgery was common, and even Bernie Dozier had undergone a bypass only two years back, but there was a natural void of common sense in the matter. In the way a person unschooled in aviation might look upon a jumbo jet and deduce there was no feasible way this ugly, fat thing should ever fly, much less carry passengers, one could just as confusedly look upon surgery. It was one of the few areas in health where science left common sense so far behind that it seemed near to magic. They could cut you open fatally, like a scimitar to the gut or a spear to the chest, and yet keep you from death. They could kill you without killing you, and then raise you up, healed. There was logic to it, of course, and a system of interaction that was intriguing, if not fascinating.

He was relieved that his heart required no guesswork, no experimenting, and was not going to be trouble. This was a procedure that surgeons performed quite often anymore, and in which the medical world had experience, down into the smallest minutiae. The commonality of surgical treatment to the heart helped to quiet his resolve. His committal to the procedure had been made, but this acceptance and the mild mood of his doctor did nothing to dim his nerves.

The drive to the hospital was as if a death march. It was with an annoying chagrin that he noted their route to the hospital passed the local cemetery. How pleasant. With his mood snuffed into light panic and the urge to smoke pushing against his thoughts with much emphasis, he wanted to cut this scene and skip to those in which he would spend the following weeks in ugly recuperation. He just needed to get onto the gurney and get unconscious. That was all he was required to do: Show up, check in, lie down. After he was out cold, the surgeons could perform their gruesome show.

"I'll pick up Vivian from campus; we'll both be there when you wake up."

"God, I'm fucking terrified, Beth."

"Are you?"

"You haven't noticed? I'm shaking."

"It'll be fine. You'll see."

"I know, it's just... well, they should give you a sedative before you even leave the house. I'm crawling out of my skin. Christ, I could use a cigarette."

"You're doing just fine. And I love you for it."

"I love you, too. But I'm... I just need to think about something else."

They reached the hospital and Emery was admitted. He now simply needed to sit down at his end of the see-saw and wait for the other kid. Beth stayed with him for a time and soon enough, he was in an unflattering gown, lying down on the narrow, tall bed with its slight, metal barricades raised at the sides. Beth drew a thin blanket over him and kissed his nervousness back for a moment. They waited in the antiseptic suite as the clock ticked off time from the wall.

An anesthesiologist entered after a few minutes and explained the process of putting Emery under, and that this would begin in a few minutes. The two surgeons would be there, as well. When the man exited, Emery squeezed his wife's hand.

"It's all right, you should go," he said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. You should pick up Vivian and... I'm supposed to be done by six, but he said it'd be a few hours before I wake up. So, I'll see you around- well, around nine, then?"

"All right. We'll be here. Try to relax," she said.

"Fuck."

"I'll stay if you want."

"No, go ahead. Her car's out and we don't want her having to walk. I'll be in the procedure soon enough. The sooner, the better. This place is awful and I want to go home and get some work done," he said, staring up at the ceiling and hospital lighting, fighting off a shudder.

"No, you're going to rest after this. No work. You'll need to _recover_ ," Beth said with emphasis.

"If you say so."

Aside from a few statements of yes and no to the various personnel in the surgery suite, ten minutes later, followed by his attempt at counting down from one-hundred, this brief compliancy to her would prove to be the final and yet unaware moment in which he would know his wife, children, and the greathearted panoply of having lived.
TITLECARD: -Epilogue-

FADE TO:

INT. ITHACA COUNTY HOSPITAL MORGUE – TIME UNKNOWN

A sterile sort of medical room, but with a basement sort of feel. There are several gurneys present in view, at least two of them containing sheeted bodies.

We focus on the outline of a particular corpse beneath a sheet on a wheeled table in the middle of the room. We pause on this scene for several seconds before a massive tick scutters in from left. The arachnid's abdomen is somewhat translucent and bloated with blood. It has a somewhat human arrangement from thorax to mouth, however. We see the insect lower his eyes and sniff at the sheet covering the body, at center. The creature moves over specific portions of the body, smelling and gauging. After a moment, we see movement beneath the sheet and the insect quickly scatters off camera, to the right. EMERY sits up and the sheet slides from his torso. He is nude and slowly climbs off the table, a little awkward, standing before the camera, looking fatigued and out-of-sorts. Shortly, his lower body is beneath frame. On his upper chest is a massive and crudely sewn-up set of incisions. Autopsy-like, these are the remnants of a recent heart surgery closed up in a hurry.

EMERY:

(running a pale hand through his hair)

I'm not actually here, you know. This is just editing. I'm being presented to introduce the end. It's a closing monologue, then we'll roll with the credits.

Human beings question talent. It baffles us and we place great emphasis on it. We respect skill, and are impressed with prolificness, but we revere talent because its origin is still unexplained. It operates from a realm of magic yet to be debunked, can seem miraculous, a gift from on high, a genetic mystery... When we encounter someone with much talent, we often say that they're born to what they do, because it must surely come from somewhere and we don't know how or why one person has a particular talent while another person does not.

We are obsessed with those children who show prodigy. We ask what can be done with our talents, and how to get more of them for ourselves, because talent represents advantage and it makes each of us unique.

I'd like you to think of a man; a self-absorbed and vain man. Now, this man thinks often of himself, and his encouragement to do so comes directly from his love of the self. The reward is quite high, and the effort minimal. Me me me. Given time, however, this character might begin to project himself on other things. He writes a song, and being proud of it, that song feels to be an extension of him. The things he loves are other extensions of him. The careers and hobbies.

At times, these things can seem to represent him, as if placeholders for his sense of worth and being. Because his focus can begin to treat these things as if they were simply more "him", the selfish man can dwell on them as he would his self, with all of his defenses and vanity, with his intricate engine of self-love, arrogantly protecting them and obsessing on them per his will. It is betterment from without, and a builder of dedication and loyalty.

His selfishness gains in power and can then be swiveled about, to focus on things outside of him. He treats these outer subjects the way he treats himself; he dotes on them, and changes them, and picks at them, and tries to perfect them. He works to leash them and better them with the full power of his natural compulsion to be who and what he is, and have others comprehend it. He does it for attention, but his own, and the subjects of his self-focus are never far from his thoughts.

We have a name for this. We call it drive, and by its nature, it is a beautifully selfish and productive mode. It harnesses all of our conceits and compulsions and self-absorption and lets us focus it on something, for once, not ourselves. Drive is the inevitable result of that black hole of self-love becoming so hungry and clever that it reaches beyond its initial confine in the pursuit of more feed. It mutates a deadly sin into a prime virtue, and is the stuff of art and enterprise.

We never know this man well. He spends much of his life placing himself in the inanimate, and because we cannot follow him there, we see only the objects, and only the man, the reactions they produce, but not the self they share and not the desperation with which they are connected. We see influences, additives, and catalysts, but never the true, base compound. We note the song-and-dance and we say "driven".

A voice speaks from out of frame, distracting EMERY.

VOICE:

Two minutes, Em.

EMERY:

(nods, changes tone)

I'd like to thank a few people. A lot of work went into the production of my life's script. I was a lousy producer for much of it, but was lucky to have a good crew. Beth played my wife with so much skill she deserves her own Emmy. Rebecca and Vivian Asher played my daughters. There was Larry and Calvin and Bernie and Maury and Martin... even Frank Gill and Orson Banry. My imaginary friend, Lieutenant Merrill, who I'm sure you've already concluded was a device, played his part, as well. Writers, directors, soldiers, neighbors. We're all devices, really. Everyone plays their part, and that's what life is good for. Fade in, one million dissolves, wipe black.

There was a man I killed up close... a Japanese man. I'd like to say how sorry I am. I don't know his name, but he was a part of my life, too. And the others who I didn't see up close. I have too many thanks and apologies to make. There are so many parts and characters in a person's life, and they're all played out perfectly, even when you amalgamate them into larger assemblies and call them the viewers, or the group of one's lovers, the group of the critics, the mass of a nation's enemies... These are allocations given to individuals that must be combined for any one person's script to work.

VOICE:

One minute.

EMERY:

(annoyed and refusing to hurry)

Death is the one instance where a script is truly and utterly final. It is the putting away of the last draft. Now, I'm here, but not really. In a moment, you'll see the screen flicker in a momentary, almost-too-fast-to-catch way, and I'll be gone. A cigarette burn, you know. The new strip of film will have been spliced in, and in a single frame, I'll simply cease to exist again and we'll be on to the new reel. Are you ready? Because I'm not.

We see a quick flit of the frame, a cigarette burn on the splice, and ASHER is no longer present. We see that he has returned to his table, under the sheet as if it had never been disturbed. We're in the newly spliced-in footage. BETH ASHER steps into frame. She is the HOST.

HOST ASHER (BETH):

There were complications and... during the surgery. A second heart attack while they had him open. They were looking at the thing while it had an attack. Right there in front of them. This- it made bleeding. Too much of it and... It's more than that. His father had a history with the heart, troubles with it, and Emery had his father's heart. His mother's blood pressure worked its way into him, too. Four packs a day... Jesus, the whiskey and steaks and- and he interacted with his heart so goddamn much.

She looks back at the table and we see a shake travel through her. She covers her mouth, gets hold of herself. The lights brighten and we see a boom mic mistakenly drop into frame above. BETH looks up and frowns, but continues talking.

HOST ASHER (BETH):

June 28th, 1975. Summer. Bad heart. Shortly before his death, my husband... oh, he said something that struck a panic into me. I didn't know what to think. He said, "I just want them to remember me a hundred years from now. I don't care they they're not able to quote a single line that I've written. But just that they can say, 'Oh, he was a writer.' That's a sufficiently honored position for me."

She pauses here, feeling her neck for a moment before gathering herself and continuing. We begin drawing closer to her, pushing slowly into a C.U. of her face.

HOST ASHER (BETH):

(clearing her throat)

But it's not. There's no sufficiently honored position. The people, they're viewers, and a hundred years... how could anyone remember that? They wouldn't even be the same people. Did we have our fun with him? Did we clap and say nice things and then kick him from the room?

I didn't think it was possible to feel as if the entire world was scowling at a person, but the feeling was there. I could smell it. What a mess. And everyone made _him_ a mess. He just wanted people to like him; that was all. To like him, which is human nature, and it's such an easy thing to do... ask me, I'll tell you. He wanted you to like him, and if he wrote something good, he only hoped you'd like that, too. I- Oh god, I can't do this.

She looks off camera, to the left.

HOST ASHER (BETH)

(beginning to weep)

I can't. You'll have to. I'm sorry.

VOICE OF EMERY, OFFSCREEN:

Okay. It's okay. I have this.

She steps back, out of frame to right as HOST ASHER enters from left. He's wearing his Other Side suit with his hair slicked back. He looks young and energetic. We see him nod and slowly turn to face the camera as he begins addressing us.

HOST ASHER:

Can we get the mic out of the shot?

We see the boom mic suddenly move to the side, then disappear upwards out of frame.

EMERY:

(at us)

You shouldn't have made her cry. That was cruel.

He pauses to think, glancing out of frame to our right. Noticing something, he frowns.

HOST ASHER:

Hold the card up. I can't see it. Yeah, right there. We ready?

There is a brief pause and he slowly nods.

HOST ASHER:

All right. We should finish out the monologue. Hmm? Yeah, I'm clear. We're ready.

He clears his throat and takes a few deep breaths, looking into the camera at us, during which we have about five seconds of near silence while he stares. After this, he raises his eyebrow a notch and lightly tilts his head.

HOST ASHER:

(resolved)

There is a drive in man. An accountable and nearly perverse desire to better himself and the ways of his world. Those most passionate empty themselves of meaning, and adopt the world's meaning, and they hunger for themselves, unable to ever sate this lifelong injury, this creature that has taken them into its design. We call this ambition, dedication, and we drink from its passion while asking only for slight compromise. At times, we might even call it sadness.

These things can push a man forward or keep him back, but always leave within him an ugly hollow. There are those who fall within this hole and never find their way out, and there are those who instead learn to fill this emptiness with a great loves, or verities, crafts or manners of communicating grand ideas to one's fellow beings, ideas that can only form... on The Other Side.

But that's not the end. It goes on, and then we die. And you die. And is there any meaning in it at all? We remember the ones that go first the most. For a little while. That's all. We remember our tragedies with great clarity, until they fade, and with the worst irony a man can reasonably figure. That's the meaning. That is the very crux and measure of everything: A little while.

Here, HOST ASHER pauses to light a cigarette he extracts from his suit jacket. After inhaling and exhaling with a sigh of relief, he adopts his trademark, television smile and his eyes gain a mark of the wry.

HOST ASHER:

We hope you enjoyed tonight's show. Tune in next week when we'll present a very special sort of story, one just as tragic and every bit as real: Your episode. Whatever it is you think up, however your most driven see fit to present it, we have three acts to flesh you out. Beware of cancellation. Beware of praise. Count your accolades and tragedies with equal doubt and, if you can, without being pierced by that dull blade of regret, try, just try, to live a little.

Takes a drag from the cigarette. Beth enters the frame, stands beside him. He smiles and puts his arm around her. Then he exhales and turns his attention to us again.

HOST ASHER:

Thank you for watching, and good night.

FADE BLACK

### About the Author

Ray Succre lives on the southern Oregon coast, U.S., with his wife and son. He has been writing for fifteen years, his work having appeared in hundreds of journals and magazines spanning a great many countries. He began writing novels in 2007. _Thank You and Good Night_ is his fifth published book.

### Also by the Author:

### Novels

### Amphisbaena (Cauliay)

### Tatterdemalion (Cauliay)

### _A Fine Young Day_ (Capacity Press)

### Poetry

### _Other Cruel Things_ (Differentia Press)

