Easy to Like (9 page)

“First,” said Mike, “let me tell you my
news.”

“Good?”

“Fantastic. The lawyers say that
without you the federal attorney doesn't have a case, and if you're a Canadian
citizen not resident here, there is nothing they can do to compel you to
testify.”

“Why is that good news for me?”

“For you?”

“If I'm going to stay in Toronto I'll
need a gig.”

“I'll talk to Lucky about getting you
an MOW or some D2V thing. They're always shooting those up there. I'm sure they
can fire a Canadian writer. Who would notice?”

“No. I'm talking about something
substantial. Something with a golden parachute. That's why I called.”

“You've lost me. You've got to speak
up,” said Mike. “I have to hold this phone away from my face, there's something
gross on the handset.”

“The CBC is looking for a new vice
president of English programming.”

On the line Elliot could hear the drone
of traffic on Santa Monica. “What's the CBC?” asked Mike, after a moment.

“The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Like PBS, only with commercials.”

“And do they have a Spanish service or
something?”

“No, why?”

“Well, you said English
programming.”

“They have a French service.”

Mike laughed.

“No, really,” said Elliot.

“Oh, so . . . they
really speak French up there? I always thought that
was . . . like a joke or something, you know like Black Jack
Shelack.”

“Jacques. Black
Jacques
ShelLAC
. Listen to me. I want the job.”

“English programming at the CBC? How
the hell am I supposed to help you with that?”

“Not you — talk to Lucky Silverman,
tell him that would be the best way to keep me here for a year or so.”

“What can Lucky do?”

“All I need is for the headhunting
agency to come looking for me. It's Barnaby Vesco out of New York.”

“I've heard of them.”

“Exactly. Someone like Lucky will have
a connection.”

“That's it? That's all you want? To
stay in Toronto, a job at . . . ?”

“The CBC.”

“. . . yeah, okay. The CBC. In Toronto.
I don't know what Lucky can do, but it doesn't seem like a lot to ask.”

“See, I'm being reasonable.”

“You sure about this? Canada?”

“I'm from Canada, or one of its
colonies anyway. I'm used to it.”

“I'll get on this. I've
got . . .” He paused, no doubt to check his Blackberry. “. . .
the opening of
Fire Blades
tonight. I'll talk to
Lucky there. Don't call me.” He hung up without a goodbye.

From: wstuckel@locura
canyon.com

To: [email protected]

Cc: [email protected]

Subject: Ferment

Frementation probs. Syrh. 118 stuck, tried
heat, advise add yeast. Clock ticking. 122 and 126 peculiar aromas.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected];
[email protected]

Subject: Re. Ferment

No to yeast. Label says native only
remember. What sort of aromas?

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected];
[email protected]

Subject: Re. Re. Ferment

Veg. Sauerkraut.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected];
[email protected]

Subject: Re. Re. Re. Ferment

Shit.

The ringing of the phone woke
Elliot from a horrendous nightmare of grapes. It was one of those non-narrative
spookers, a Gunnaresque formal experiment of the subconscious. In it grapes
appeared, simultaneously, in bursting clusters, tumorous and testicular,
weighing down their vines, shaking and bouncing on a triage table, burbling
sickeningly in vats — and they were nowhere but around him, hemming him in, an
exhausting, claustrophobic, eternal purpleness, violets and mauves, sanguine
juice, regal robes, bruises.

“Yes?”

“You okay, Elliot?” It was Mike. “You
sound terrible.”

“Just waking
up . . . Shit, what time is it in Los Angeles?”

“It's five thirty.”

“What are you doing up?”

“My yoga is at six and I have a
breakfast meeting.”

“You drove out to a pay phone?”

“No, I picked up a bag of cellphones
last night. Lucky Silverman told me about it. I spent hours with this guy,
valuable hours.”

Elliot could not but imagine a sack,
like a pillowcase, stuffed with cellphones, and recall his dream.

“A bag of cellphones?”

“It's what you have to do these days. A
line can get compromised so easily. You have a sensitive call to make, you use
the phone once and then discard it.”

Now Elliot pictured power lunchers at
Providence and The Grill, all of them with Louis Vuitton overnight bags of
cellphones on purse stools beside their chairs.

“The landfills will be giant mountains
of used-once cellphones. Imagine great ringing and vibrating mounds —”

“That's someone else's issue, Elliot,”
Mike snapped. “It's a business reality. You should be nice to me, I've got your
arrangements made.”

“Regarding?”

“Lucky is on the board of General
Electric, as is Jack Barnaby.”

“Who?”

“Of Barnaby Vesco.”

“Right.”

“It wasn't such a big deal, he went
through six phones and it was done. In a week or two someone is going to
discover you are in Toronto, you are going to be asked to apply, you will be at
the top of the list of candidates. “

“Wow.”

“Like I said, Lucky very much
appreciates your not being around to speak to the investigators.”

“You hadn't said, but I take your
meaning.”

“You can't change your mind now. People
went out of their way.”

“Why would I change my mind?”

“For one thing, the money is the
shits.”

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re. Re. Re. Ferment

The printers still have not been paid for
last year's labels. Miguel says the bottling line requires maintenance. Another
letter from Diehl at bank.

Clarence
Where
art thou, keeper? Give me a cup of wine.

Second
Murderer
You shall have wine enough, my lord, anon.

— William Shakespeare,
King Richard the Third

ELLIOT DID NOT HAVE
time to get anything made but found a decent clothier where he was outfitted in a darkest navy Brioni suit, a Façonnable shirt with vaguely nautical blue and red stripes, and a bold, shimmering scarlet Talbott tie. Remembering how Lucy used to caution that his thick mane tended to mad scientist, he got a cut. But meeting his interviewers in a boardroom at the Barnaby Vesco offices in the Gooderham Building on Front Street, he worried that even these simple preparations might have been overdoing it and was glad not to have shown up in bespoke. Though the young woman from Barnaby Vesco was smartly put together, in a tapered black jacket with rounded shoulders (surprising in a woman's garment), a blouse of Mediterranean blue, and a straight silk skirt, the two interrogators from the CBC looked, from the dun-coloured sacks on their backs, to work in Ottawa.

They were introduced. One was a vice president of human resources, the other a senior bureaucrat from something called, ominously, the Heritage Ministry. Elliot promptly forgot their names. The VP HR attempted to look at ease, removing his jacket, loosening his tie, and rolling up his sleeves, evidently doing so with an eye to his reflection in the window, so scrupulous and regular were the adjusted cuffs.

The other one set out a pipe, a kit holding its cleaning implements — reamers and whatnot — and a tin of tobacco on the table in front of him. Elliot caught a whiff of the bowl's figgy pong. The man's woollen suit was antique; a wispy comb-over underlined (in pencil?) his baldness rather than veiling it.

Cuffs gave Elliot a flash of dentures.

“Sandra” — Cuffs gestured toward the woman from Barnaby Vesco — “confesses to having been lucky.”

“Oh?” said Elliot.

“That someone such as yourself should happen to be in town now and willing to come in for an interview on such short notice.”

“How they found me . . . I can't even venture a guess. That I am in Toronto at all is complete coincidence.”

“Kismet,” said Pipe.

Cuffs gestured that they should be seated.

More than for what Elliot might do as vice president of the CBC, the panel mostly plumbed him for war stories from Hollywood. They induced him to drop as many names as he knew. Elliot obliged and, having exhausted those actors and directors with whom he'd had direct professional dealings, retold tales he himself had been told of big-name A-listers. To mask the origin of these, he played cagey with details as if, the model of discretion, he didn't want to reveal too much. Cuffs and Pipe, in turn, reacted knowingly, implying “enough said.” His interviewers were familiar with
The
Centuri Protocol
and knew Elliot was involved and probably in on the action. Elliot modestly deflected inquiries in this vein, stating, truthfully, that his participation in the project wasn't such a big deal.

They dispensed early with the question of why a man of such professional accomplishment as Elliot should, in effect, take a step down to work at the CBC. Elliot said that it had not been an easy decision but that after reflection, he felt it might be time to come home and give something back. He hinted that he no longer needed money so could afford the token $400,000 per annum, but would insist that he be given latitude in terms of the time he spent at the office. While he would put Hollywood behind him, he would never let his beloved vines suffer.

They danced around the topic of the actual making of shows. This was either shop-floor detail or too vulgar for the executive realm. They responded well to his implication that the role of “the talent” in the creative process was oft overstated and that executives held a more critical function than was commonly recognized. He implied that he himself was much more a producer than a writer, having crossed the river from worker to manager some years ago.

After about twenty minutes there was a change in tone. There were issues that, however unseemly, must be addressed.

“The Internet. New platforms. Your thoughts there?”

Elliot had a few: that it made more crap more widely and readily available, that writers saw only puny residuals on the action, that it was content's Kali, erasing the value of mechanical reproductions of every sort, and that it would supplant broadcast television. He thought he'd fudge this last bit.

“I'm neither threatened nor seduced by evolving technology,” he almost purred. Though meaningless, this answer was, judging by his interlocutor's slight nod, the correct one. Elliot stayed the course. “Computers, phones, the next thing and the thing after that: they are part of a continuum for television.”

“So do you see making content specifically for these platforms or —”

Elliot was confident enough of what they wanted to hear that he interrupted.

“I don't see the economics. While the CBC is a public broadcaster, it must, surely, be mindful of sound business practice.”

All three panellists were nodding now.

“Let's look at the first television broadcast as the ur-platform,” he continued. “That content can then be redistributed either as is or broken down and platform-purposed. It's really an opportunity to alter, to re-engineer content so as to expand its audience. It's media ecology: reuse, recycle. People say that a network can't serve everyone, every way. I say it can, and for less.” Perhaps this was pushing it.

“I have to say it is heartening to see such optimism,” offered Cuffs. “Perhaps it's an American thing.”

“Yes, there are a lot of doomsayers at the CBC,” added Pipe.

“I have nothing but optimism for television. What else are people going to do? Read?”

“Indeed,” said Pipe. “Literacy figures in Canada are television-positive, half the population can't understand a newspaper.”

“Now . . . when you say ‘everyone, every way' . . . ?” Cuffs wanted to back up.

Yeah, Elliot had gone too far.

“Well, obviously not certain elites. But was television ever their medium?”

Pipe and Cuffs almost smiled.

“It's schedule architecture and design,” Elliot improvised. “Are you familiar with the book
A Pattern Language
?”

“The title is familiar.” Pipe scratched a note to himself.

“Think of the various entrances to the programming day. It's been the practice to plan and place those gateways before we see where people are going. My notion would be to put the shows out there, see how people are approaching them, and then reorganize their placement to accommodate viewing patterns. Let's see what people are watching, when and where, and
then
build the schedule. Three-sixty-degree management.” Elliot was losing track of the incomplete thought that had spawned this line of reasoning. Three-sixty-degree management? What the fuck did that mean? “Appointment viewing is dead anyway. We've too long been doing it backwards.”

“Yes, backwards, at the CBC, very much so,” Cuffs said.

“We have to bring them in and keep them with us through the schedule. The television audience is relatively passive; we should capitalize on audience inertia.”

“What of metrics?” said Pipe.

Elliot didn't have a clue what he was being asked. Thankfully, Cuffs interjected. “Not benchmarks now but . . .”

“Yes, perhaps I shouldn't have asked,” said Pipe, chastened. “We've had some disappointments in terms of measuring the audience. I mean, you set a target, inevitably you'll miss.”

“Even the bigger, more nebulous ones,” added Cuffs.

“I'm not sure I . . .” Elliot felt safe in saying.

“A previous VP rather impetuously said that if shows didn't reach a certain viewership, defined numerically, well . . . then he would cancel those shows.”

“And it didn't work out —”

“— the way anyone anticipated,” Pipe finished for Cuffs.

“Desired,” clarified Cuffs.

“So . . .?”

“So, we had to hastily change the terms, bring in softer, more qualitative measurements of success.”

“We moved to the ROOB 6 system.”

“Which is a great system.”

“It replaced the metrics recommended in
Television Canada 2015
,” said Pipe.

“TVC-15 was such an amazing study.” Cuffs sounded wistful.

“Classic consulting, TVC-15 — longitudinal, a keeper.”

“People couldn't appreciate TVC-15 early on. It was complex, wasn't going to show its potential until a few years out.”

“Yes, complex but elegant. Everybody wants consultation that they can use right away,”said Pipe.

“But a good analysis, it has to be for the long term.”

Cuffs and Pipe sighed in unison.

MBAs were the Mayan high priests of Elliot's time. They needn't possess any actual knowledge of a practice to pronounce, from on high, about it. They used systems of complex divination, known only to themselves, in concert with calendars and schedules and rudimentary mathematical models to determine when should be the planting and the blood offerings. They did it all from within the temple. They would, in time, destroy their own civilization. Elliot, needing refuge in Canada and possibly some sort of signing bonus, was not in a position to point this out.

“I am prepared to live or die by the ratings,” interrupted Elliot. “Remember, my background is American television.”

Those words, “American television,” were dirty talk for his audience, irresistible and pornographic. They were stirred by the words, but felt guilty in taking pleasure from them.

“Just a few more questions,” said Cuffs. “I've heard all I want. Something I'd written down . . .” Cuffs searched his papers. “Oh yes, here it is. I know this sounds trite but . . . Which television programs do you like?”

“Like”? How many times had Elliot been asked which Châteauneuf-du-Papes he “liked”? He could never bring himself to answer, and now, being asked this question about television shows, he finally knew why. He didn't “like” any of them, just as he didn't
like
any Châteauneuf-du-Papes — he liked the concept of them in the abstract; he was in love with a memory of a perfect sip of wine that was no doubt impossible to revisit.

What television shows did he like? He was hypnotized by the primitive magic of storytelling. He was transported by the well-spun yarn, the telling details and then the detours and feints and mostly the lies, the anticipation as the teller took a sip of rum and a drag off a fag and considered, reconsidered, where next would turn the truth. When he first saw Godard's
Vivre Sa Vie
he realized that the machinery of cinema, moving pictures in montage, had reinvented story for the age. It was self-aware and self-referential, at once tale and essay — we are all prostitutes in the Western capitalist system, it said, brazenly, and then proved it with photomechanical poetry. If a picture was worth a thousand words, how many were said when they were churning past the lamplight at a speed of twenty-four per second?

“Like”? If you liked something, it couldn't be very good, could it? It would be enough, just enough to satisfy. And maybe that's why network television worked. It was enough to keep you there, unmoving, on your couch so that you were a stationary target for the commercials. It didn't have to be any more than that.

If one cared deeply for something, was truly devoted to its beauty, one saw only its potentiality, its possibility of perfection. Surrounded by only those examples that, at best, strove for the absolute expression, you came to wear, in joyous agony, in masochistic ecstasy, the failures as trophies. If you loved something that much, you necessarily hated it. Elliot hated all television shows and all movies, but, in the abstract, he loved moving pictures.

Which television shows did he like?

“I have to return to what I said earlier,” Elliot finally answered. “I'm not afraid of the numbers. I don't mean to be rude, or evasive, but in truth I don't think it's the job of a vice president of the CBC, or a person in the same position at any network, to like television at all.”

Across the table was sunshine. Elliot sensed they wanted to applaud. Cuffs used the energy coming from his enthusiasm to launch himself from his seat and bound around the table. He thrust a hand at Elliot with the speed of a punch.

“I can't say anything, of course, there are some procedural things . . . but if you could plan on being here, in Toronto, next month . . . I appreciate that this is sudden.”

Pipe couldn't restrain himself. He clapped his hands a couple of times before reaching for his smoking kit. “I know it's completely inappropriate to say this but . . . you're the candidate we've been waiting for.”

“It's the truth,” said Cuffs.

Elliot took only a moment to feel good about himself. This whole performance had been a brazen gambit, and he'd executed it with élan. He had not flinched or varied; he'd set upon his goal and he'd achieved it.

But were they not too anxious to hire him? And surely, in all of Canada, there must be at least a few dozen candidates for the position who were genuinely qualified. Why were these people not vying for the post? Elliot would now have to do the job, which, on consideration, didn't seem all that appealing. He was going to be running the English-language television service of the CBC. Why would anyone want to do that? Who had fooled whom?

“Once all the terms . . . even before, I feel that once this is put in front of the president and the board —”

“A formality,” added Pipe.

“— they'll be asking that you start right away.”

“Right away.”

“There's next season to program and schedule.”

“Lingering morale issues from the strike.”

“Budgetary issues.”

“Issues relating to declining ad revenue.”

“Coming from the issue of the increasing age of our audience.”