Easy to Like (11 page)

Elliot thought there might be time to
scan some of the show proposals and scripts the Heads had stacked on his desk.
But Hazel was back.

“I will be candid if you can be
discreet,” she said, closing the office door behind her and walking to his
desk.

“Of course,” said Elliot. “Please speak
freely.” He was relying on her doing so.

“I liked Bernard Hunt. He was not a
brilliant man and he made mistakes. I believed his heart was in the right place.
His intentions were good. He believed in public broadcasting —” Hazel stopped
for a moment. She splayed her fingertips on the desk so that her hands, with
their swollen joints, looked like scorpions. She rocked, her heel probably up
out of one of her shoes. “But I held a different view of Stanford Heydrich. I
was on the verge of resigning when he was forced out by his indiscretions. I'm
speaking in strict confidence.”

“Yes.”

“And I volunteer this only as a
necessary preface for the explanation as to why there are so many Creative
Heads.”

Could Hazel read his mind? They'd only
spoken on the phone a few times before meeting today.

“I wondered,” said Elliot.

“Appointing senior managers was
Stanford's way of deflecting and shifting blame, as well as a kind of
displacement activity.”

“Displacement activity?”

“
Übersprungbewegung
. When animals are put under stress, they perform
certain actions out of context. When you steal an egg from gull's nest, it will
start pulling out grass with its beak.”

“Scratching your head.”

“Exactly. Whenever there was problem —
ratings, mandate, labour relations — mostly ratings — Stanford would make an
appointment, create a new position. All to say . . . you
will have to filter some of the noise.”

“Could we not cut their numbers
significantly? Terminate the contracts of the least useful half?”

Hazel shook her head.

“The severance packages, the optics. If
someone's performance was terribly poor, Stanford would send them to a
management training course at the Niagara Institute. And they are useful for
keeping pitching producers from your door.”

“Okay.”

“I suppose . . . it
might be worth firing a few of the most incompetent. If only to send a
message.”

“Could you run me up a list of the five
or six worst?”

“Absolutely,” said Hazel. “Now, I
thought we might take a stroll, give you a tour of the plant, meet some of the
worker bees.”

“Sure.”

“If you'd rather not, right
now . . . I've been presumptuous . . .”

“Not at all. That's the way I'd like to
keep it, at least until I better know the lay of the land. Presume away, and
stay close.”

Elliot knew to expect low morale
stemming from the recent labour troubles. Wages were middling and the CBC,
subject to cutbacks imposed in an earlier era and never reversed, didn't have
enough money to do things the way they should be done. What surprised him,
moving through the expansive, unwalled newsrooms and open-concept offices of the
other units, was just how dreadful the conditions were. Employees, even those of
standing, were allotted a tiny working space. They were organized to lay eggs on
an industrial scale, not to invent anything. Here was the handiwork of MBAs,
thought Elliot: it wasn't a workplace issue as much as a human rights matter. No
wonder that his hand was shaken with so little enthusiasm and even, in one
instance, refused.

That the mood was black was reinforced
by the nagging omnipresence of posters for the EAP, or “Employee Assistance
Program.” It was enough to be reminded, at every turn, that the people around
you were in almost constant need of assistance, but it was worse to have that
message conveyed with the aid of lurid graphics. One poster showed office
workers, arms by their sides, morphed into matches in a book; the head of the
employee farthest to the right was bursting into flames, dooming the conjoined
to the same incendiary fate. The faces were all in a terrified, screaming
rictus. The caption read, “Don't get burned by the office hothead. Call EAP.” A
banner in an elevator showed CBCers being hustled into boxcars by Gestapo, with
the caption, “On time and under budget.” A sallow, beaten jobber nailed to a
cross that rose from a cheery cocktail party of suited managers exhorted its
audience, “Don't die for their sins. EAP.” Elliot resolved to deal with the
situation by staying, as much as possible, in his own office.

The tour was concluding with a quick
recce of the studios, the shooting floors. A sketch comedy show was being made
in the first of the hangar-sized rooms. The crew had obviously been alerted of
his visit, for they were executing a technically demanding shot, using some sort
of certain-to-break-down robotic jib arm, when Hazel and Elliot entered. Elliot
pretended, as best he could, to be interested, but he was well enough versed in
the mechanics of show making to know its tedium. The operator of the jib device
was controlling it far from the action with a joystick. When Elliot offered his
hand to shake, the technician took his own from the control. They finished their
how-do-you-do's just in time to see, on a monitor, the camera crashing into the
wigged noggin of one of the goofmeisters on set. The funnyman was knocked
senseless. Elliot could imagine the playback, the actor's eyes and mouth wide as
the lens bore down on him. Now that would be truly amusing stuff: definitely a
cut above any of the witless gags crawling up the teleprompter.

Elliot was dreading having to repeat
these meet-and-greets with “the talent” and so was relieved, if perplexed, to
discover that all the other studios were rented to outside concerns and
consequently off-limits. From without, as they passed, these appeared the
busiest spots in the building. Actors milling about one sound stage were in
period suits and dresses from the 1930s. “Some film out of Hong Kong,” Hazel
explained. Farther down, a couple of tiny Southeast Asian tarts, sexy young
things in skimpy body stockings and thigh-high boots, approached. “Vietnamese
television over there,” said Hazel. As they passed, Elliot saw that the southern
deltas of the performers' suits were stretched and lumpen on account of the
packages they carried.

In preparation for taking his post,
Elliot had familiarized himself with — well, scanned — the Broadcast Act, the
yellowing Canadian legislation that first established the CBC. As Elliot
recalled them, the organization's objectives and terms of operation, however
fuzzy, did not include the goings-on he was now witnessing in these public
facilities. Before Elliot could get his question out, Hazel was answering
it.

“The real estate division of the
Corporation is tasked with finding money, and their authority is absolute. They
determined that the studios were being underutilized, so they put out the ‘for
rent' sign. It could be worse. Out in the wilds, in St. John's and Edmonton,
they sell the joints.”

Liquidating assets was always a last
resort, a desperate measure. Elliot thought of his Mackintosh set, his snooker
chairs.

“So all the vice presidents are
not . . .”

“Equal? Heavens, no. It's understood
that, while you are on the same tier of the management committee's
organizational chart, your office is, in practice, more elevated than,
say . . . VP English Radio. Similarly, the real estate
division, despite their official standing in the bureaucracy, effectively
outrank you. The CBC is broke, you see.”

Before leaving at six thirty
Elliot stuffed his valise with a selection of show bibles and scripts from the
pile on his desk. Rather than comparing one hapless sitcom to another, he
decided to mix it up, grabbing a couple of half-hour comedies, a movie of the
week for a family audience and another that could probably air only after
midnight and even then only on cable, a reality show, a sketch comedy show, two
hour-long adult serial dramas, and a twelve-hour documentary series about
“Reason.”

In finalizing his contract with the CBC
he'd implied, discreetly and disingenuously, to those drafting the terms that
the compensation was considerably lower than that to which he was accustomed. To
lessen the blow they threw in a company car — an Audi — and a condo off King
Street, walking distance from the Broadcast Centre. He would just as soon have
stayed on at the Four Seasons, but it was too costly a proposition and would
betray his lack of commitment to the job.

The forbiddingly named Liquor Control
Board of Ontario turned out to be a well-stocked source of wine (though they did
not carry Locura Canyon), with an outlet conveniently located at the nearby
Queen's Quay. There was a Loblaws supermarket there, too. He got what other grub
he needed delivered from a tony local victualler, Pusateri's.

He couldn't be bothered to cook so
threw a frozen President's Choice rogan gosht in the microwave and opened a
bottle of lager. He checked his email.

From:
[email protected]

To: [email protected]

Cc: [email protected]

Subject: ATF

Pickers freaked by uniforms in the
Grenache. First pass on the east block and five dudes in the trees with
sidearms, guys thought it was immigration. Miguel went up to see what was going
on. Guys flashed ATF badges and told him to fuck off.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re. ATF

Don't copy Bonnie on this stuff. No email
at all. Call me on my cell.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected];
[email protected]

Subject: Re. Re. ATF

What would the ATF want? Should I call
them?

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected];
bonorg@locuracanyon

Subject: Re. Re. Re. ATF

I'm sure it's nothing. I will deal with
it.

And indeed that was his intention. The when
and how still eluded him.

If 80 percent of success was showing
up, was there not a corollary that said there was a 20 percent chance they'd
forget about you if you failed to appear? Sure there was. Lucky Silverman was
playing just such a game in the matter of the wiretaps. If nobody was around to
answer, the questions wouldn't get asked. Maybe, if Elliot stayed out of reach
long enough, the ATF and USDA would let the matter drop.

In the meantime, the new job meant
Elliot was going to avert — just — a couple of disasters. With his first few
cheques he'd catch up with Lucy, allow Bonnie to deal with the most pressing
bills, and make a symbolic payment on (but still not dent) the winery debt. The
wolf would no longer be at the door. He'd be in the parking lot, finishing a
cigarette.

The microwave timer sounded, signalling
that his prefab curry was ready and that he was alone.

The best he could do was to turn on the
television, obliged as he now was to be conversant with the medium in Canada.
The new couch gasped as he sat on it. All his furniture smelled of the factory,
the synthetics still venting.

What was this show he was trying to
watch? It was another medical drama, something set in an emergency room, but no,
now there were guys in raincoats flashing badges, so a police procedural; one of
the cops was placing a call on a cellphone; cut to a far too beautiful woman
drying herself, having gotten out the shower again, one towel in hand, the other
wrapped around her breasts — this was the troubled home life to which the
dedicated investigator was not paying enough attention; having received the
exposition, the woman slammed the portable handset back into its cradle. Next
our hero was at the morgue, attending an autopsy. The audience was witness to it
all, the incisions, the viscera, the close-up removal by forceps of some
invidious foreign object.

Elliot knew why these shows were so
popular these days. They told the viewer that murder and mayhem could all be
decoded. Crime on the street, the random victim, the blood-drenched colonial war
in the desert, the alarming biopsy results . . . it would
all be explained away by an expert. Another agency of the hypnotic box: giving
answers, even if entirely made up. And, of course, anything involving the police
and gun violence was a gift for the lazy screenwriter needing to up the dramatic
stakes — the “Guy with the biggest gun” merely had to point it.

Elliot changed the channel to the CBC.
A horse opera? No, too many trees. A . . . well, you would
call her “handsome” — a handsome lady was riding a horse. She came alongside a
fence to talk to an RCMP officer. Cut to her coming home. She hung up her cowboy
hat and walked into the kitchen, where a man was at the stove. She gave a tween
girl a maternal kiss on the head; the house husband got one too. Elliot checked
his jacket pocket and found Hazel's business card. He dialled the number she had
written on the back. It was answered after a single ring.