Harley Kozak: Dating Is Murder

“Nine hours ahead,” Paul said.

“Tell Sharon she’s got till midnight.” Bing ran both hands through his preternaturally thick black hair and groaned.

Paul’s eyes met mine, mirroring my concern, then went back to his camera.

Fredreeq approached with a handful of makeup tools, from which she selected a lip pencil. “Don’t think about this now,” she said. “I’ve got so much base on you, if you frown, you’ll crack. Open your mouth and hold still. I think Mac’s drying out your lips, I’m gonna try Clinique. You’re not licking them, are you? Don’t answer. Hold still.”

Fredreeq was not a professional makeup artist, but she’d worked as a facialist for years and was grabbing this chance to break into show business. She’d hung out on the set during my first episodes, wormed her way into Bing’s affections, bad-mouthed Venus, the original hair-and-makeup person, saying she made everyone look like drag queens, then offered her own services at bargain-basement prices. Bing gave her Mondays and Thursdays on a trial basis. Mondays and Thursdays were my work nights, so Fredreeq got to work on me and all three men, but not the other two women contestants. Venus, not happy about having her hours cut by a third, was now committed to one of “her” girls getting the audience vote, and had declared all-out war. Fredreeq was therefore heavily invested in me winning the B.C. contest. I myself wouldn’t have cared, if not for the health-care plan.

“Fredreeq,” I said, when my lips were my own again. “Annika hasn’t been around the set. That’s very weird. She considers this her second job, because Munich’s planning a German version of the show and Bing promised to recommend her as a coproducer when she goes home. It’s called Biologische Uhr, she talks about it all the time. Paul says-”

“I don’t care what Paul says.” Fredreeq waved a rabbit-hair makeup brush in my face. “I don’t know where this girl is and you don’t either. But we know where she isn’t, which is inside that restaurant, hiding in a basket of chicken fingers. So you put her out of your mind and get some heat going between you and Carlito. I know it’s not easy, with that piece of hair he’s got sticking up in front like a unicorn, but there’s a lot at stake here.”

Fredreeq’s worries were twofold: me winning the Biological Clock contest and the show finishing out the season. Our ratings were paltry, even for ZPX, where a 1.4 household rating was a big deal. We struggled for the million or so viewers reported to be watching us, and listened to rumors that ZPX planned to replace us with Nearly Nude News.

Twenty minutes later, I sat alongside Carlito Gibbons in a Naugahyde booth, watching him pick at his cowlick, as Paul-the-assistant placed a bottle of sake between us, the label prominently displayed. Takei Sake was the show’s sponsor, and all six contestants drank sake, or tap water in sake cups, in every episode. Finally, Bing mounted the Betacam on his shoulder, hung over an adjoining booth like a toddler on an airplane, and started shooting.

Carlito, the youngest of the show’s contestants, was handsome in a class-president way. He came to life when he’d had some sake or when the camera was on him, speaking without hesitation on any topic, a talent that fascinated me. “I’m a paralegal,” he said, responding to the evening’s Biographical Question. “People don’t know the difference between a paralegal and a legal secretary. I’m more than a glorified file clerk. I draft the bones of the complaint, the lion’s share, only a few critical details of which are filled in by the attorney.”

“Hey, what’s the difference between an attorney and a lawyer?” I asked. Bing had given me strict orders not to let Carlito go more than three sentences without interrupting him.

Carlito brightened. “Good question. I like to say, Every law school graduate is an attorney, but it takes an outstanding attorney to be a lawyer. People don’t realize-”

“Cut!” Bing said. “Fine. Carlito, ask Wollie what she does for a living. Wollie, don’t mumble. Sparkle. Be sexy. Head up. And don’t look at the camera.”

I nodded, feeling awkward, and tried to smile at Carlito. “Well, Carlito, I design greeting cards. I have my own line, the Good Golly Miss Wollies-they’re alternative greetings, not the standard Happy Birthday to a Wonderful Nephew genre. Not that there’s anything wrong with those. Nephews need birthday cards. I just don’t do them. To supplement my income I’m painting a mural of frogs in the kitchen of a house in Sherman Oaks. Oh, and I’m working on getting a bachelor’s degree in graphic arts. I’m finding math a little challenging.”

Carlito had stopped listening and was checking out the menu.

“Cut,” Bing said. “Okay, I’ve got some usable stuff. Let’s bring in the doctor.”

Following the Biographical Question, each Biological Clock episode featured an expert in the parenting field who raised hot-button issues that helped the viewing audience assess our parenting potential. The show wasn’t big with the eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old demographic, but it had once won its time slot with whatever twenty-five- to forty-nine-year-old women were awake at that hour, which Bing liked to point out, in case this was as compelling to anyone else as it was to him.

Paul escorted to our table a fiftyish man in a good suit, who smiled broadly and shook hands all around. “Daniel Exeter. Hi. Sorry I’m late, I had an ectopic pregnancy to deal with.”

“Where’s your lab coat?” Bing asked. “Paul, didn’t you tell him to bring a lab coat?”

Daniel Exeter looked taken aback. “It’s in the car, but as I told Paul, it’s not something I wear outside the clinic and-”

“It’s all about visuals, Dan. Raises your IQ thirty points and establishes credibility, which is what TV is all about. Get it for him, Paul.”

The doctor fished a valet-parking stub out of his pocket. “Porsche Carrera.”

Paul took off at a trot. Bing eased himself out of the booth and said, “Right in here, Dan, opposite our stars. What are you drinking? Sake?”

“It’s Daniel, actually. A glass of white wine will be fine.”

“Too gay; let’s go with Scotch rocks. And forget first names. To us, you’re ‘Doctor.’ ”

Bing got us situated. Paul came back with Dr. Exeter’s lab coat, its Westside Fertility logo visible on the breast pocket. Joey, helping out, adjusted a light on a tripod and nodded to Fredreeq, standing by with a compact of pressed powder. As a former actress, Joey always knew what was going on ten minutes before Fredreeq and I did. Isaac, his ears covered with headphones, moved in with his boom, a large, fur-covered microphone on a broomstick.

Bing had Carlito ask the doctor which was better, sex or artificial insemination.

“Is anything better than sex?” Dr. Exeter asked. “Sorry, little joke. For the average couple trying to conceive, sex works just fine. However”-here he glanced at me-“when a woman enters the winter of her reproductive life, that fact becomes a fertility issue.”

“Go ahead, Dan, ask her how old she is,” Bing said. “No, don’t look at me-never look at the camera. Look at Wollie. The girl.”

Dr. Exeter turned back to me. “How old are you, Wollie?”

“I’m-”

“No, don’t tell him, Wollie,” Bing said. “Say something coy.”

Behind him, Joey rolled her eyes. I said, “Actually, I don’t mind telling-”

“Wollie! Just say, ‘I’d rather not say.’ ”

“I-I’d rather not say,” I said, hating myself for not being able to come up with something snappier. Also for setting feminism back a few years.

“All right,” Dr. Exeter said, “let’s assume you’re a senior citizen, in ovarian terms. Late thirties, early forties.” He leaned back and took a sip of his Scotch, then made a face. “Adoption, surrogacy, donor eggs, surrogacy and donor eggs, these are all options for late-in-life mothers. Trying to do it yourself at that point is a long, heartbreaking proposition. A thirty-five-year-old woman is fifty percent less likely than a twenty-year-old to conceive unassisted. A forty-year-old has a one in fifteen chance each month. At forty-five, you’re like a vegan trying to contract mad cow disease.”