Soap Opera Slaughters (2 page)

Charlie was my first fish. A next-door neighbor bequeathed him (her?) to me. At that time he lived in a variety store fishbowl, the kind you can hold in one hand. Deciding Charlie would be lonely in there, I bought her (him?) a companion, but the newcomer lasted less than a week. It occurred to me I didn’t know all that much about goldfish care, so—dumping the dead fish and changing the water—I bought a paperback on
How to Help Your Goldfish Thrive.
I found out what I was doing wrong. Everything.

Ninety dollars later, Charlie was comfortably ensconced in a ten-gallon aquarium filled with aged tap water, a filter floss/charcoal corner filter, fifteen pounds of prewashed gravel, a hose leading to the air pump that rests above on the tank’s screen cover (which also holds the 25-watt strip light), two fantails named Marty and Jackie, and a batch of anchored anarchis.

According to the book, anarchis is a hardy plant capable of withstanding the nibbling of the average goldfish. It didn’t have a chance with my roughnecks, though. I stared at them for at least ten minutes while they tore off every single leaf from every available stalk. I wondered whether they were engaged in some kind of Pet Power protest Maybe they wanted a bigger aquarium? Different food?

The Channel 14 teaser shook me from my reverie. I put down the
VTR
cartridge and waited for the commercials to end. Soon the newscaster returned and the remote film played. I saw a vaguely familiar midtown Manhattan block. An ambulance was at the curb. There were police holding back the curious.

This afternoon at a quarter past two, a man fell from the roof of the block-long
WBS-TV
studios on West Fifty-third Street near Twelfth Avenue. Medical examiners say he died instantly.

“Police refuse to comment on whether the death was accidental, suicide or the result of deliberate violence. However, Chief Inspector Lou Betterman admitted the incident looks extremely suspicious.”

The familiar boiled-fish glower of Fat Lou Betterman, Hilary’s family friend on the force, appeared on the screen. Brushing his stubby thumb back and forth over the straggly ends of his salt/pepper mustache, Betterman spoke into the handheld microphone the remotecaster aimed at him.

BETTERMAN
(grousing)

Look, I’m not bugged because the victim happened to be bare-[
BLEEP
], it’s a hot day, maybe he was sunbathing. But I want to know where the [
BLEEP
] his clothes are, we didn’t find ’em on the roof.

The camera panned to the remote reporter, who said further investigation disclosed nobody had seen a man without clothes wandering the
WBS
halls.

They cut to another on-the-spot interview, this time with an elderly security guard wearing glasses so thick his eyes looked three times as big as they actually must have been.

SECURITY GUARD

...a hell of a lot, man, not on a Saturday, ‘cause they don’t tape “Riverday” on th’ weekend, there’s just only th’ news crew, and they’s all accounted for. That poor bastard must’ve just snuck in—

Which amounted to a general announcement that
WBS
security was lax and the public might as well come right over and nose around. I felt sorry for the old man. He probably just bought himself a pink slip.

The anchorman returned and said the body, too badly smashed to identify, was at the
ME
’s on First Avenue, where the usual fingerprinting, tissue samples and forensic dentistry work was under way.

I had my fill of atrocity news. Switching to
VTR
mode, I inserted the tape cartridge and settled back to watch “Riverday.” It was a good episode. Lara Wells had several dramatic scenes that gave her a chance to show what fine acting she was capable of. I marveled once more at her uncanny resemblance to Hilary. They even shared a few mannerisms.

No evidence on the program of Harry Whelan. It was a good episode.

I dozed off before it was over. In my sleep, I rescued Lara from man-eating telephones and a horde of naked goldfish.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I
T’S BAD ENOUGH TO
fall asleep feeling sorry for yourself, but it’s a hell of a lot worse waking up in the same state with a stiff neck from sleeping at an impossible angle on a hushed Sunday morning. In Philadelphia.

The
VTR
, after running to the end of the reel, shut itself off, and now the glowing screen was blank. The speaker emitted a middle-register monotonous hum.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I stood up, cramped and cranky, aching in every joint, rested but not at rest. I could hardly straighten my neck or back. My clothes were rumpled, and I felt gamy. I didn’t like myself, the world, or even my goldfish—why should I, they never bought
me
dinner.

I switched off the
TV
, put away the tape cartridge, went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, then stripped and let the needlepoint shower try to wash away my predawn blues.

But half an hour later—cleaner, wide awake—I sat once more in my living room, still thoroughly depressed. Once upon a time, Sundays were reserved for reading the funnies on the floor with Dad, eating the banquet maternally labored at all day in the presence of cousins and grandparents, but now they were nothing more than bleak weekly reminders that I was thirtyish, still single, tormented by better yesterdays. My friends are settled, moved or dead, my family is gone, it’s gauche to buy newspapers with rotogravure if you can even find them, American restaurants don’t have tables for one...and even I was bored by the valid yet commonplace litany of my own self-pity.

The late August sun filtered through the interstices of the oriental screening, unaccompanied by the slightest noise of traffic. Pine Street might have been an empty Kansas plain.

After feeding the fish, throwing out the garbage, watching strangers walk past my window, I wondered what device I could discover to take the cutting edge off living through another Sunday.

Stooping, I picked up Saturday’s newspaper where I’d left it, still spread out wide upon the living room rug, and there was the big banner headline staring up at me.

MEET YOUR FAVORITE SOAP OPERA STARS!

At first I told myself, Gene, you’re not going to drive twenty miles and rubberneck with the unwashed multitudes just to catch a glimpse if your dream-mistress’ eyebrow. Then I modified my machismo. I had nothing better to do, and I’d been meaning to check out the new Delaware County mall, anyway. Sure, I felt a little sheepish about the extent to which soap opera addiction had taken hold of my imagination, and yes, I fully expected to find myself in the middle of an army of closet loonies unable to separate fantasy from reality, but damn it, I argued with myself, there are supposed to be fifty-five million Americans watching daytime dramas every week, why should they be any less correct than the proverbial outnumbered Frenchmen?

Before I left, I considered taking along my binoculars, so I could at least be reasonably sure of getting a good look at Lara Wells—just to see if she
really
resembled Hilary all that much. But I decided finally to leave them behind, on the unlikely chance that I might actually meet her. I wouldn’t want to give her the impression I’m just another celebrity chaser.

I pulled off Township Line and headed south towards Garrett. Traffic was unusually heavy for a suburban Sunday. I had the ominous impression that most of it was headed exactly where I wanted to go.

I was right. A block away from the main parking lot entrance, the line of autos came to a bumper-to-bumper standstill. It took a good ten minutes to inch close enough to see the actual turnoff. The holdup was chiefly caused by a few inept lot attendants trying to direct the arriving vehicles to the rapidly disappearing spaces within.

I managed to make it inside, though not many behind me did. I found a space in the last, furthest row from the long, low line of the exterior mall. Switching off the ignition, I locked up, got out and set off for the main entrance.

It was a warm afternoon, with a sky the color of the water of Provincetown. The clouds were shy and scant, and the sun gloried in puckering up my eyes against its glare.

As I drew closer to the quarter-mile-long main el of the complex, I realized that, despite the crowd, I was in a much better mood, partly because I was doing something instead of sitting at home staring at the calcimine, partly because the clement weather brightened me. But mainly because I enjoy visiting shopping centers, department stores, supermarkets—they evoke in me that sense of Carnival which is an apt metaphor for America itself, glamorous and tawdry and wonderful. Even roadside Howard Johnsons charm me with their vulgar array of coin machines that I can never pass without dropping in a quarter just to witness the mechanical mysteries of some worthless trinket’s chuted delivery.

In the parking lot, adults and children of all ages streamed towards the mall’s main entrance, bottlenecking before its thick Lucite portals like dreamers asked to choose between the Gates of Ivory or Horn. Their eager shining faces were mostly Caucasian, but with a generous sprinkling of other ethnic groups. Some talked and laughed, but mostly it was a curiously quiet crowd, tense with a charged anticipation that was palpable in the air of early afternoon.

When still some distance from the entry, I observed a riptide of countermovement about twenty feet to my right An eddy of autograph-seekers waving papers, books, pens and pencils converged on a young blonde vainly attempting to push through the knot of people.

My breath caught. I immediately recognized Lara Wells’ silky hair, tied severely back, her trim figure, her lustrous blue eyes. But how in hell could Security permit her to walk unescorted across a thronged parking lot? It was madness. The fans would strip and smother her in the name of adulation.

I white-knighted to her side, elbowing, sidling, shoving and trampling, skipping sidesaddle. Her distressed voice wailed above the crowd’s gabble. Middle-aged women shook crimson-leather autograph books in her ; hands dipped into Lara’s purse and the dossier she carried beneath one arm, emerging with photographs, lipstick, rouge, even wadded tissues. A teenager with acne used the press of the mob as an excuse to familiarize himself with her contours. She huddled in a defenseless ball, her eyes wide with panic.

Muscling in next to her, managing to accidentally on purpose knock aside the kid and a few of the more rabid souvenir seekers, I shouted for her to stay close, I was going to help her break through.

Gratefully, she turned to acknowledge the aid. Then her eyes widened, and so did mine.

“Gene!” Hilary exclaimed, throwing her arms around my neck.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and Hilary was running true to form. Yes, she thanked me for the cosmetics I purchased to replace what her “fans” filched. But it bothered her that I knew all her brands and shades.

We sat across the table from one another exchanging cool trivialities while elsewhere in the mall’s third-floor press room half a dozen daytime celebrities told polite fictions to journalists. The first “star show” was scheduled for 1
P.M
., the second at four. Because Lara Wells was in the early lineup, she was downstairs getting ready and I had not yet set eyes on her.

The large, chilly room was filled with white linen-covered round tables that bore small bowls of potato chips, popcorn, pretzels and peanuts. A much-frequented bar was stocked with all the basics. Against one wall was a long banquet table laden with great trays of cold cuts, naked shrimp ringing reservoirs of cocktail sauce, cherry tomatoes and celery stalks and stuffed olives, wilted lettuce beds cradling diced fruit assortments, here and there a crabapple included for shape and color. But one of them graced the platter I brought to Hilary.

As I glanced across the table at her, I marveled at how much lovelier she was in person than memory painted her, even though my recollection kept her likeness in cameo. Her light golden hair shone with dazzling highlights and her blue eyes seemed to hint at things her lips refused to utter.

Earlier, Lara herself loaned Hilary a pair of slacks and appropriate blouse to replace the dress that the mob rumpled and ripped. Meanwhile, I shopped in a variety store downstairs and found the irritating cosmetics.

Hilary was determined to minimize my rescue. “I could have handled those animals,” she said, “but they all seemed to think I was Lara, and that meant I had to keep my temper. Otherwise, whatever I did would have been blamed on my cousin, and ugly rumors would get into the fanzines.”

“Uh-huh,” I agreed drily, nibbling at a Saltine. If that’s how she chose to play it, okay, there was no need for me to edit her own personal filmtrack of events the way she wanted to remember them. And if she didn’t wish to bring up Harry, that was all right, too. For the time being.

“So Lara Wells is actually your cousin Lainie.”

“Mm-hmm. On my mother’s side. We grew up together, but she was Laraine Adler in those days. We’ve been out of touch nearly ten years.”

Laraine Adler. Cousin Lainie. I’d often heard the name. Hilary doesn’t talk much about her girlhood, unless to complain about her father. But on those infrequent occasions that find Hilary in a rare nostalgic mood, she usually mentions her cousin Lainie— Laraine—with a mixture of affection and envy. Lara née Laraine was a breezy, outgoing, assertive young woman; everything Hilary wasn’t and wished she could be. Hilary constantly argued with her mother, but Lainie got away with lots of things without ever being caught or scolded. Oddly, Hilary never considered it unfair; she loved her cousin and secretly vowed to be more like her when she grew older. I had no idea if she’d succeeded, but I always thought it’d be interesting to meet Lainie and compare her with Hilary. Nothing ever was said about Lainie being an actress, so it didn’t dawn on me that Lara’s uncanny resemblance to Hilary was anything but coincidence.