Sellevision (2 page)

“Peggy Jean, did you hear? About Max, I mean?” Amanda asked, standing in Peggy Jean’s doorway.

Peggy Jean turned dramatically in her chair to face the young woman. “Of course I heard, and I think it’s exactly the right thing to do.”

“You don’t think it’s a little too severe? I mean, just dropping him like that?” asked the associate producer.

Peggy Jean smiled the exact smile she often wore for viewers while hosting a vacuum-cleaner showcase or one of the monthly Easy Wear 18K Gold specials. She touched the lapel of her jacket. “Well, of course I’m sorry for Max, as I would be for any human being facing an adverse situation. But when God closes a door, Amanda, He opens a window.” Peggy Jean looked up at the suspended ceiling. “He must have other plans in store for our Max.” Then the smile was gone. “And now, Amanda, if you don’t mind . . . I have an awful lot to do.”

Amanda shrugged. “Sure, I understand. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Peggy Jean returned her attention to the computer screen, listening to make sure Amanda actually had left. Then, almost biting the tip of her manicure, but stopping herself, Peggy Jean read the alarming E-mail for the third time:

To: [email protected]

Fr: [email protected]

Subject: Hi There!!

Hi Peggy Jean!

How exciting to be able to write you! I am a loyal Sellevision fan and have ordered everything from Crock Pots to jewelry. I am so pleased with the quality of the countless items I have purchased from Sellevision.

Peggy Jean, my ears always perk up when I hear your voice on Sellevision. You are my favorite host. You are so professional and friendly, and I just love your hair!!

Speaking of hair, I just want to tell you this, woman to woman: Peggy Jean, I have noticed many times in close-up pictures how very hairy your earlobes are. When I first noticed, it was a bit of a shock to see a beautiful earring on your ear, surrounded by all those hairs, which on my large-screen TV were each almost the size of a Vienna sausage!!

I wonder if you have considered using the
Lady Songbird Waxing Hair Removal System
that I have seen on Sellevision. It seems a painless, quick and easy way for you to be even more beautiful than you already are.

I bumped into (really!!) my friend Susan at the supermarket and we got to talking, you know, just catch-up stuff. Anyway, I mentioned Sellevision for some reason, I forget why. And before long, we were talking about the show and our favorite hosts and she said the very same thing I’m telling you now!!! Isn’t that a hoot! (LOL) She said, “She’s a very hairy lady.” We both had a good chuckle out of it, but PLEASE understand it wasn’t a chuckle AT you personally.

Well, I’ve talked on and on, so I’ll stop here. May God bless you and your family. And you have my very best wishes.

                               Your friend,

                               Zoe :)

Peggy Jean pulled a small key from the inside pocket of her fuchsia DKNY blazer and unlocked the file cabinet beneath her desk. The drawer contained emergency nylons, a spare pair of simple black pumps, a few sets of earrings that could easily coordinate with most any outfit, and her purse. She pulled out her purse and removed her compact, peering into the small mirror, angling her head as much to the side as she could. She didn’t see any hairs. But then, this was a small mirror, held at a distance. It certainly wasn’t a macro shot from Camera One.

If there were, in fact, long blond hairs on her earlobes that were so obvious on camera as to be the subject of a fan’s E-mail, Peggy Jean knew she would have to have them removed before going on air at four
P.M
. Yet, whom could she ask? If she did, in fact, have the hairs, whomever she asked would surely gossip—mention to somebody else, “Peggy Jean has hairy earlobes”—and word could easily spread all the way to her executive producer, Howard. The idea of being called into the refined, forty-five-year-old’s office and being verbally confronted about the earlobe hairs, having to explain that the situation had been remedied—well, it was just unthinkable.

Peggy Jean remembered there was a large magnifying mirror in makeup, and that it was illuminated by a ring of small, round bulbs. Surely makeup would be empty now, between the hosts’ shift change. Instinctively, she reached for the tube of Lancôme moisturizer on her desk and squeezed a dime-sized dollop onto the back of her hand. Then she quickly rubbed her hands together until they were soft and fragrant. Feminine.

She placed her purse back into the file cabinet, locked it, and pocketed the key. Leaving her office, she turned left and continued down the hall, passing Trish Mission along the way.

“Peggy Jean, you look wonderful, I
love
that jacket,” Trish said, gently taking the cuff of the blazer between her thumb and forefinger, admiring the softness of the fabric.

“Well, thank you, I’m glad you like it. This is the first time I’ve worn it in public. Took a little field trip to New York last Saturday with the hubby, and picked this up at Bloomingdale’s.”

Trish gave Peggy Jean a friendly nod. “Well, the color is just wonderful on you, it looks great with your eyes.” And with that, Trish wished Peggy Jean good luck on that afternoon’s Gem Fest and continued down the hall.

Was it Peggy Jean’s imagination, or had Trish taken a quick look at her earlobes?

Trish was one of the “emerging” hosts of Sellevision. Her growing popularity was propelling her from the overnight slot where new hosts were groomed—presenting a Fashion Clearance or various kitchen implements—to the spot she currently occupied that, although varying, included the occasional prime-time appearance, most notably her recent trip to London where she hosted a British Bonanza.

How soon before the aging (thirty-eightish) hostess with a possible superfluous hair condition was replaced by the much younger, more beautiful, and fully waxed Trish Mission? There was a prized-racehorse quality about Trish that unsettled Peggy Jean. Tall, blond, and ambitious, Trish seemed to be growing more and more successful out of sheer entitlement.

Makeup was, thankfully, empty. Peggy Jean walked directly over to the small round mirror that sat on one of the dressing tables. She pressed a button on the side that caused the bulbs to flicker momentarily, then illuminate. She peered at her reflection, moving her ear as close to the mirror as possible, using the gleaming Frosted Cappuccino–painted nail of her index finger to move the lobe into the light. There they were: tiny hairs, faint and almost unnoticeable unless one were actively looking for them in an illuminated magnifying mirror, as she was doing at that moment.

Amanda, having noticed the light, paused and stood in the doorway, watching Peggy Jean examine her ear. “Peggy Jean?” she asked, concerned. “Is something the matter with your ear?”

H

eading west on I-92, Max drove mostly in the passing lane, averaging a speed of seventy miles per hour. His favorite CD—the original cast recording of
Rent
—sat unplayed in his five-CD changer. “Stupid, stupid, fuck,
fuck
,” was the mantra he repeated aloud to himself as he headed toward the Woodlands Mall to see if he could obtain a certain Beanie Baby named Peanuts for his almost-seven-year-old niece. As much as the Woodlands Mall was the exact last place Max wanted to be (Jake’s Joint, a bar, being the first), he simply had no choice. His niece’s birthday was the day after tomorrow and he had been unsuccessful locating the elusive plush toy on the Internet. Now he was forced to shop the old-fashioned way: in person.

Don, the Good Morning Show host and father of a fourteen-year-old girl, had told Max that the Toys R Us at the Woodlands Mall had a very extensive Beanie Baby selection. “That,” he had said to Max, “would be your best bet—and I’m saying this as the father of a girl who wouldn’t speak to me for a full week after I gave her Snort the Bull with that little red tag cut off.” After wishing Max good luck in his search, Don had warned “Oh, and whatever you do—don’t cut that stupid little tag off. It’s
all
about the tag.”

WOODLANDS MALL, NEXT EXIT
, read the sign. “To think, unemployed . . .
me
?” Max said to the windshield. As he crossed over into the far-right lane, he resisted the temptation to aim the steering wheel into the cement guardrail, causing his top-heavy Ford Explorer to careen over the embankment, explode into flames, and kill him instantly. Instead, he decelerated down the exit ramp and wondered, What if I’m reduced to doing traffic reports?
On radio
?

At four in the afternoon on a Wednesday, the Toys R Us was thankfully empty. Cold, electronic renditions of children’s songs played over the store’s speakers: “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” even, oddly, “Kumbayah.” Every few minutes, the Muzak was replaced with a loud chorus of children singing the haunting Toys R Us advertising jingle, “
I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us Kid
. . .” The store, as vast as a warehouse, was piled to the ceilings with urinating dolls, bikes, puzzles, Lego sets, action figures, colorful balls, teddy bears implanted with microchips that enabled them to shake hands, Just Like Mommy cell phones, board games, plastic machine guns, two-pound bags of M&Ms, and inflatable pool creatures. Max stalked the aisles, looking for the Beanie Babies, never more thankful for his homosexuality and the child-free life that went along with it.

At the rear of the store, Max saw a huge display of Beanie Babies. Hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe
millions
of Beanie Babies to chose from. And all Max had to go on was a name: Peanut. No description, nothing. To locate Peanut, Max would have to examine the name on every single little red tag.

Unless he asked the little girl who was standing at the Beanie Baby display along with her mother. Who better to ask than a child?

“Excuse me,” Max said, approaching the little girl and her mother. The little girl spun around to look at the stranger talking to her. “I bet you can help me. I’m looking for a particular Beanie Baby named—”

The little girl’s scream could be heard throughout the store, possibly the state. It was the sound of raw terror, as if Max were a ragged, scotch-stained Barney holding a machete. “It’s him, Mommy, it’s him, it’s the pee-pee man from last night,
make him go away, make him go away
,” she cried, clinging to her mother and burying her face in the fabric of her mother’s skirt.

“It’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay,” the mother reassured. Then to Max, “I’m terribly sorry, she’s not herself today—Madeline saw”—she whispered—“a man’s
penis
on the television last night and it really upset her.”

Max stood dumbfounded, the shrillness of the little girl’s cry stabbing his eardrums.

The little girl continued to sob into her mother’s skirt. “It’s him, Mommy, it’s
him
.” The mother examined Max more closely and a glint of recognition entered her eyes. She pointed at Max. “Oh my God, that really was you! You’re Max Andrews from Sellevision! That
was
your penis!”

A store detective appeared before the three of them. “Is something the matter here?” he asked. “I’m in charge of security.”

The little girl turned to the uniformed authority figure, and asked in awe, “Are you a policeman?”

The detective looked kindly at the girl, “No, honey. Well, sort of, I guess. I’m the police officer of the store, I suppose you could say.”

The little girl pointed at Max, then burst into tears again. “He’s a bad man, make him go away, I saw his thingie, he showed me his thingie.”

The detective immediately turned to Max and glared.

The mother tried to calm her little girl by bending down and stroking her head, repeating, “It’s okay, sweetie, there’s nothing to be afraid of, it’s okay.”

The detective gripped Max’s elbow firmly. “You are in
big
trouble, mister.”

“H

i, and welcome to Sellevision. I’m your host, Peggy Jean Smythe, and you’re watching Gem Fest.” A small listening device, discreetly tucked into her left ear and hidden by her hair, allowed Peggy Jean’s producer to communicate to her from Control Room 2 on the other side of the building. On the floor in front of Peggy Jean were two large color monitors. One was a live-feed, displaying the exact scene that the rest of America was watching. The other monitor displayed the next scene, be it a long shot of the set, a close-up of the model who sat in a chair off to the side, Peggy Jean herself, or simply a prerecorded “beauty shot” of the object she was presenting. At all times, there was a colored box on the left-hand side of the screen that contained the name of the item, the item number, and the price, along with the Sellevision telephone number. The color of the box varied and could be coordinated with the theme of the show. It could be yellow for the Good Morning Show, pink for a Hosiery Showcase, or blue for a Gem Fest. During the JFK Jr. Memorial Collection, the box was black. The Sellevision logo was always on the lower right-hand side of the screen, and never left.