Easy to Like (19 page)

“
Les Les.
”
Hazel pronounced it, as was the intention, “Lay Lez.”

“You're joking.”

“No.”

“Point one: a title that requires a
tutorial for the audience . . .”

“It's the funniest script I've read. No
exaggeration, in all my years at CBC this is the funniest. And the two women
that play the leads, I've seen them on stage —”

“Like, the theatre?”

“Yes, and they are hilarious.”

“It's about a lesbian couple.”

“So?”

“In their forties. Catty. Cynical.”

“Skeptical. A lot of the humour comes
out of that.”

“You've seen
The L
Word
. Those girls live on cable, in West Hollywood.” Elliot knew his
aversion to the
Les Les
script was partly to do with
some similarities he noted between its principal characters and Lucy and
Ascenscion. If Lucy merely suspected he'd used even a moment of her life as
fodder for a sitcom on Canadian television, she would murder him.

“Granted, the characters on
Les Les
are not happy, well-adjusted people,” said
Hazel. “They are marginalized. Sometimes they're angry.”

“One character is a Québécoise, the
other is from Newfoundland.”

“Yes?”

“Those people have nothing, nothing
whatsoever, to do with Canada.”

“They're part of Canada.”

“Politically, for now,” said Elliot.
“Nobody in the populated areas of English Canada really cares about what's going
on with Newfoundland or Quebec or women. We need people of colour. Have you
walked around this town? How about fiscally conservative Sri Lankan or Korean
dykes? That's much more the Canada of today.” How loud had he said this? Elliot
wondered.

“I agree we've been too white, but you
can't order up a ‘show of colour.' One will evolve organically.”

“Not at the CBC it won't.”

“I want you to look at
Les Les
again, please.”

“These two girls get drunk and make out
in the pilot episode.”

“Was that not a funny scene?”

“I guess. Yeah, it was. But. I know
that at another time in my life I would have said, ‘Let's challenge the
audience,' but maybe they don't want to be challenged.” A thought came to
Elliot. “Do you think that the taste of an entire society can change at
once?”

“How do you mean?”

“It's seemed to me that one day, people
are, I don't know, eating butter- or cream-based sauces, and then another day,
all at once, people don't like them.”

“I'd not noticed.”

“It's the same with shows, you know. A
sitcom that everybody found funny one day becomes ridiculous the next. I mean
maybe the culture gets saturated with police procedurals or Cabernet Sauvignon
or hip hop and then turns from it, but what's important is that the culture
behaves as a single organism.”

“And you're suggesting
that . . . ?”

“That maybe the comedy of
Les Les
is of a different time. One where people were
perhaps more . . .”

“More sophisticated?”

The sommelier returned. He held a
bottle of wine out for Elliot's scrutiny.

Elliot gave a perfunctory nod, still
pissed at the man's fawning mention of the
Wine Advocate
review. If Elliot's wine had achieved same, he would have worried that he
had completely compromised his principles. And yet it would be nice to
occasionally get some approbation, a meaningless score or an award of some sort
for a screenplay or the wine, even if the people making the call didn't have a
clue. Wouldn't it?

The sommelier uncorked the bottle and
poured a sample. It was closed, not showing as well as it would with some air,
but promised fresh thyme rubbed between your fingers and the rare figgy thing of
an unlit Gauloise. Better than expected.

“That will be wonderful,” said Elliot.
The waiter went to fill Hazel's glass but she put her hand out to cover it and
decline. “Hazel,” protested Elliot, “this seems decent stuff.”

“I don't really drink,” she said. She
glanced out the window. “Half a glass, then.” The waiter poured and left the
bottle. Hazel tasted her wine.

“It's nice,” she said. “But perhaps
wasted on me. My father drank wine, got the bug while he was a student at
Oxford. He was an interesting man, fabulous storyteller — with many to tell.
Quite funny. Only when he talked about wine did he manage to become a bore.”

“Is that a warning?”

Hazel took a great draught of the wine
and swished it about her mouth with the same vigour she might Listerine. “What
about Wednesday?” she asked.

Over three courses Elliot explained the
rest of the schedule. Hazel voiced her disbelief with an animation, and volume,
that attracted the attention of the neighbouring tables. It wasn't that Hazel
did not drink but, Elliot saw, that she could not. His hitherto decorous second
was, under the influence, voluble and blousy.

“If we aren't going to carry
Reason
, who the hell else will?” Hazel was pitched up
on the table by her elbows, leaning over empty plates toward Elliot. Her right
hand, clutching a lipstick-rimmed wine goblet, swung loosely, yet she spilled
not a drop.

Reason
was
twenty eponymous television hours dedicated to the discussion of its advance.
This was without precedent on television. The documentary series' writer and
host was an eccentric academic, Dr. Jurgen Palme. The scholar was motivated to
make a public case by what he saw as a return to irrationality in contemporary
society. Palme's producers provided not just a proposal but the entire run in
first and second draft, as well as a fifteen-minute pilot. The show was engaging
and — this should not have been a surprise — well considered. It was even
entertaining, was never stuffy but always, always demanded the full attention of
the audience.

Elliot weighed how the show would play
at the weather office. Two people there were religious: Kulvinder was a devout
Sikh and Heather, from HR, was a recent convert from non-practising Catholic to
enthusiastic Pentecostal. They would be offended. Elliot could see a few of the
other guys and gals maybe staying with it for a few minutes, but when it got
challenging, and they were tired . . . only Felix, the
clarinet-playing, cross-addicted information technology dude, would stick with
it. And in Elliot's reckoning, Felix's tastes flagged trouble. Felix would love
Les Les
.

“It might have once been the CBC's
function to carry shows no one else would,” Elliot finally replied, “but I made
some commitment regarding performance when I interviewed for this job.”

“Forget about those dorks. I mean,
really, Elliot, think of the sort of mind that can measure things only in
quantitative terms. Jesus, bring in Robert McNamara and instead of bodies he can
count viewers.” Hazel put a finger to the corner of her mouth to wipe away a
drop of wine. She checked the spot with her tongue. Elliot watched this with
what must have been too close attention, for she looked back at him and laughed.
“If people are stupid enough,” she continued, “to judge whether the CBC is
serving the nation only by how many people watch a
show . . . you can't listen to that. Everything isn't
quantitative, doughnuts aren't better than lobster because more of them get
eaten, you don't buy your dresses because they're cheaper by the dozen, bigger
is not necessarily better . . .”

“No, but bigger
is
bigger.” Elliot did not like where the conversation was going,
or, more accurately, where Hazel was holding it.

“You know, when I was younger, when I
was doing my communications theory in university, I completely bought into that
po-mo notion that there was no essential difference between high and low
culture. WRONG!”

Heads turned toward Hazel's raised
voice.

“. . . Because . . .”
Hazel hoisted an empty bottle. “Elliot, do we need more wine?”

“Maybe a glass of a sticky with a
shared dessert.”

Hazel made a face like a baby rejecting
a spoon, muscling her lips into a moue and crushing her eyes shut.

“Not partial to sweet wines,
Hazel?”

“Make mine a
Cognac . . . and no dessert for me. What about late-night?
The audience is gonna be tiny no matter what we put on. We can't pimp enough
A-list celebs to compete with the American slate, so why not chase an entirely
different part of the market, one that's younger and smarter?”

“They are mutually exclusive.” Elliot
needed to piss. He excused himself, hoping that Hazel's drunkenness would help
her forget what they were talking about in his absence. He looked back from the
door to the washroom to see her waving down a waiter. Too much was made of wine,
Elliot thought. In the end it was just booze.

He planted himself in front of a
urinal. Finishing the schedule gave him a sense of accomplishment, one without
the protracted anxiety that came with finishing a script. Scripts went on to be
judged, and, despite all the hands in their realization, the author always
assumed the ultimate responsibility for failure. Never mind that directors or
actors would be credited for success — a bomb was the scribbler's fault. These
shows and pilots, on the other hand, would be commissioned with conditions, and
Elliot would simply sit back and wait to see whether they met expectations.
Finally he was the ultra-audience, sprawled on some elevated couch, like a Roman
emperor, in judgement. As an executive, it would be he who assigned blame, even
if the mistakes were his own.

Surely, though, there must be an upside
to being in the creative end of the business. He was trying to think what it was
when a man stepped up to the urinal immediately next to his and noisily
unzipped. This was strange; there were four other pissoires available. Elliot
turned to get a quick look at the man and found that he was staring straight
back.

“Beautiful evening,” the man said. His
white hair was combed back over a wide head. The ghostly mane was long for a man
of his years, running to the collar of a bespoke jacket.

“'Tis,” said Elliot.

“So we meet. Fortuitous, us being in
here alone.”

“How so?” Elliot was putting himself
back together in what he hoped didn't appear to be a panic.

“We don't have much time.” The man
looked over his shoulder and then back down toward his dick. “So I will be
direct. You've had a hand in the privates.”

“Before you
continue . . .” Elliot saw that in his haste he had captured a
corner of shirttail in his fly. It was stuck.

“I want you to —”

“Look, no offence, I'm flattered, but
—”

“Nobody has to know. The offer is
there. I trust you understand me.”

“I —” Elliot pulled the fabric free,
tearing it, and closed his trousers. He rinsed his hands, shaking them dry as he
dashed for the door.

“I'm not asking that you do anything
you don't want to, certainly nothing unlawful, merely that when you're done
there . . .”

“Thanks . . . but
no thanks.”

Hazel was slurping from a snifter when
Elliot returned to the table.

“I saw that!” she said.

“There was a guy in the john.”

“Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I didn't
notice he was here.”

“Who?”

“Janeck Klima. He must have seen us.”

“This guy . . . I
think he was trying to proposition me.”

“The man who runs CTV?” Hazel now
whooped. It was a hillbilly holler; Elliot felt the wait staff bristle. “Klima
what? Offered to blow you? Not likely. You must have got the signals crossed.
That is too rich.”

“He runs CTV?”

“The corporate parent, these days. I
saw him scurrying to the washroom after you went in. He must have been waiting
for a chance. What did he say to you?”

“I . . . geez . . . I'm not sure. I
assumed he was, you know, toilet trading.”

Hazel threw her head back and let
laughter shake her. Her neck made Elliot think of a tall birds, herons or
cranes, and he wanted to kiss her. She buckled a bit, so funny did she find the
thought, bringing her knee in across her body as if to stop from peeing.

“Perhaps we should get the check,”
Elliot said.

“Yeah,” said Hazel. “Let's go to your
place.”

En route to Elliot's apartment
Hazel made the cab swing by a 7-Eleven so that she could buy, she said, “a deck
of fags.” She tried lighting one up in the taxi but was stopped by the driver.

Once in the door, before Elliot had
even removed the key, Hazel made straight for the kitchen and lit a cigarette
off the toaster. She wasn't much practised in smoking, holding it away after a
puff and yet somehow still managing to get smoke in her eyes. There was
three-quarters of a bottle of La Gramière, a wine from the southern Rhone that
Elliot admired, on the kitchen counter. She helped herself, pouring a hefty
measure in a tumbler, and called for Elliot.

The hand holding the cigarette was
around his neck and she pulled him in with all her weight. Her kisses were
ravenous; she shoved her tongue against his and he could feel her teeth. As
abruptly as she was on him, she pushed him away and stepped to lean against the
counter. She took another graceless draught of the cigarette and tossed it in
the sink.

“I don't smoke,” she said. “But
sometimes I feel like I want to.”

She grabbed him by the belt, using it
as a lead to yank him closer even as she rushed to undo it.