Free The Man Who Cancelled Himself by David Handler Page B

us.”
    “Katrina,” said Tommy distastefully. “He’s paying her thirty grand a week this season to be his coexec producer. Christ, she was Leo’s runner last season, making three hundred a week. Now she gets to sit in on writers’ meetings. She even gets to speak.”
    “I hate, hate, hate this scene,” squeaked Annabelle. It was a drop-dead imitation. Her eye even drifted. “Where’s the irony, guys, comedically speaking?”
    “The woman,” said Marty, “has Lyle’s ear.”
    “In addition to various other parts of his disgustingly gross anatomy,” added Tommy.
    “The woman,” said Marty, “knows very little about comedy.”
    “The woman,” snapped Tommy, “is a stupid, nasty twat and we all hate her stupid, nasty fucking guts.”
    No one disagreed. Tommy’s designated role, it appeared, was to give voice to what the others were too afraid to say out loud. It was a role he seemed to savor as much as he did his sourness.
    “You notice that rock on her finger? The show paid for it—twenty grand easy. She wanted a john for her office—the show paid for it. Hey, if it’s for us, no way. Nickels and dimes. He even charges us for our long-distance calls. But if it’s for him and his bim, the money’s there. Would you believe the show paid for all his coke last season? It was right there in the budget, under car and driver. Hell, the show pays for half a dozen extras every week who don’t even exist. He pockets their wages himself. He must pull in thirty grand a week under the table.”
    “And then he pockets the table,” Annabelle chimed in. “Him and Leo. I’m, like, one time last season our art director, Randy, needed to build a set, last minute, and discovered there was no money left for it in that week’s budget—even though he hadn’t even built one set! I’m, like, so he went out to the prop warehouse in New Jersey to see what he could beg and borrow and, guess what, he discovers an antique dining table and chairs being loaded onto a truck headed for Leo’s place in the Berkshires. Leo sells the stuff up there to dealers and then splits the proceeds with Lyle. They’re thick as thieves, those two.”
    “That’s why Lyle insists on personally supervising the entire production,” Tommy explained. “If there were a lot of lawyers and business affairs people around he’d never get away with all the shit he pulls. Or he’d have to cut them in on it. That’s also why he insists on doing the show here instead of in L.A. God and Jazzy Jeff are three thousand miles away. And with Marjorie he can play human bulldozer.”
    The office door suddenly burst open. And there stood the human bulldozer, filling the doorway shoulder to shoulder in his unbleached caftan. He wasn’t kidding about taking precautions against germs in the studio. Over his mouth and nose he wore a surgical mask, on his hands latex gloves. He looked like he was on his way to the O.R. to take out somebody’s spleen. The man was boiling. His face, what little of it showed, was a deep shade of crimson. His eyes were high beams of intense light, the whites huge. They looked like a pair of poached eggs. He slammed the door shut behind him, shaking the whole office. Papers flew from the desks. “Your agent is scum!” he raged at The Boys. “Your agent is filth. Your agent is—!”
    “Why do you say that, Lyle?” Marty asked him calmly. “Because he’s trying to hold you to a deal you already agreed to?”
    “Human pollution!” Lyle roared on. “That’s what he is— human pollution! He’s everything that’s wrong with the television business! I won’t speak to him again! I won’t let him destroy my show! I won’t … !” He trailed off, chest heaving. He’d noticed me there. “Hiya, pal,” he said pleasantly. Total mood change. He may have even been smiling—hard to tell with the mask. “Getting settled in?”
    “In a manner of speaking.”
    “Good, good. Knew you’d fit right in. We’re all family