Ed McBain - Eighty Million Eyes

“Is this supposed to be a joke?” Gifford asked. He asked the question politely and quietly, but there was enough menace in his voice to blow up the entire city.

Wetherley, who could be as polite as anyone in television when he wanted to, quietly said, “Which one is that, Stan?”

“This mother-in-law line,” Gifford said. “I thought mother-in-law jokes went out with nuclear fission.”

“I wish my mother-in-law had gone out with nuclear fission,” Wetherley said, and then instantly realized this was not a time for adding one bad joke to another. “We can cut the line,” he said quickly.

“I don’t want it cut. I want a substitute for it.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Then why didn’t you say what you meant?” Gifford looked across the studio at the wall clock, which was busily ticking off minutes to air time. “You’d better hurry,” he said. “Stay away from mothers-in-law, and stay away from Liz Taylor, and stay away from the astronauts.”

“Gee,” Wetherley said, deadpan, “what does that leave?”

“Some people actually think you’re funny, you know that?” Gifford said, and he turned his broad back on Wetherley and walked away.

The assistant director, who had been standing near one of the booms throughout the entire conversation, sighed heavily and said, “Boy, I hope he calms down.”

“ I hope he drops dead,” Wetherley answered.

Steve Carella watched as his wife poured coffee into his cup. “You’re beautiful,” he said, but her head was bent over the coffeepot, and she could not see his lips. He reached out suddenly and cupped her chin with his hand, and she lifted her head curiously, a faint half smile on her mouth. He said again, “Teddy, you’re beautiful,” and this time she watched his lips, and this time she saw the words on his mouth, and understood them and nodded in acknowledgment. And then, as if his voice had thundered into her silent world, as if she had been waiting patiently all day long to unleash a torrent of words, she began moving her fingers rapidly in the deaf-mute alphabet.

He watched her hands as they told him of the day’s events. Behind the hands, her face formed a backdrop, the intense brown eyes adding meaning to each silent word she delivered, the head of black hair cocking suddenly to one side to emphasize a point, the mouth sometimes moving into a pout, or a grimace, or a sudden radiant smile. He watched her hands and her face, interpolating a word or a grunt every now and then, sometimes stopping her when she formed a sentence too quickly, and marveling all the while at the intense concentration in her eyes, the wonderful animation she brought to the telling of the simplest story. When in turn she listened, her eyes watched intently, as if afraid of missing a syllable, her face mirroring whatever was being said. Because she never heard the intonations or subtleties of any voice, her imagination supplied emotional content that sometimes was not there at all. She could be moved to tears or laughter by a single innocuous sentence; she was like a child listening to a fairytale, her mind supplying every fantastic unspoken detail. As they did the dishes together, their conversation was a curious blend of household plans and petty larceny, problems with the butcher and the lineup, a dress marked down to $12.95 and a suspect’s .38-caliber pistol. Carella kept his voice very low. Volume meant nothing to Teddy, and he knew the twins were asleep in the other room. There was a hushed warmth to that kitchen, as if it gently echoed a city that was curling up for the night.

In ten minutes’ time, in twenty million homes, forty million people would turn eighty million eyes on a smiling Stan Gifford who would look out at the world and say, “Back for more, huh?”

Carella, who did not ordinarily enjoy watching television, had to admit that he was one of those forty million hopeless unwashed addicts who turned to Gifford’s channel every Wednesday night. Unconsciously, he kept one eye on the clock as he dried the dishes. For whatever perverse reasons, he derived great pleasure from Gifford’s taunting opening statement, and he would have felt cheated if he had tuned in too late to hear it. His reaction to Gifford surprised even himself. He found most television a bore, an attitude undoubtedly contracted from Teddy, who derived little if any pleasure from watching the home screen. She was perfectly capable of reading the lips of a performer when the director chose to show him in a close shot. But whenever an actor turned his back or moved into a long shot, she lost the thread of the story and began asking Carella questions. Trying to watch her moving hands and the screen at the same time was an impossible task. Her frustration led to his entanglement, which in turn led to further frustration, so he had decided the hell with it.

Except for Stan Gifford.

At three minutes to 8:00 that Wednesday night, Carella turned on the television set, and then made himself comfortable in an easy chair. Teddy opened a book and began reading. He watched the final moments of the show immediately preceding Gifford’s (a fat lady won a refrigerator) and then read the telop stating STAN GIFFORD IS NEXT, and then watched the station break and commercial (a very handsome, dark-haired man was making love to a cigarette with each ecstatic puff he took), and then there was a slight electronic pause, and Gifford’s theme music started.

“Okay if I turn this light a little lower?” Carella asked. Teddy, her nose buried in her book, did not see him speak. He touched her hand gently, and she looked up. “Okay to dim this light?” he asked again, and she nodded just as Gifford’s face filled the screen.

The smile broke like thunder over Mandalay.

“Back for more, huh?” Gifford said, and Carella burst out laughing and then turned down the lights. The single lamp behind Teddy’s chair cast a warm glow over the room. Directly opposite it the colder light of the electronic tube threw a bluish rectangle on the floor directly beneath it. Gifford walked to a table, sat, and immediately went into a monologue, his customary manner of opening the show.

“I was talking to Julius the other day,” he said immediately, and the line, for some curious reason, brought a laugh from the studio audience as well as from Carella. “He’s got a persecution complex, I’ll swear to it. An absolute paranoiac.” Another laugh. “I said to him, ‘Look, Julie—’ I call him Julie because, after all, we’ve known each other for a long time, some people say I’m almost like a son to him. ‘Look, Julie,’ I said to him, ‘what are you getting all upset about? So a lousy soothsayer stops you on the way to the forum and gives you a lot of baloney about the ides of March, why do you let this upset you, huh? Julie baby, the people love you.’ Well, he turned to me and said, ‘Brutus, I know you think I’m being foolish, but…”

And that’s the way it went. For ten solid minutes, Gifford held the stage alone, pausing only to garner his laughs, or to deliver his contrite look when a joke fell flat. At the end of the ten minutes he introduced his dance ensemble, which held the stage for another five minutes. He then paraded his first guest, a buxom Hollywood blonde who sang a torch song and did a skit with him, and before anyone at home realized it, the first half of the show was over. Station break, commercial. Carella got a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, and settled down to enjoy the remaining half hour.

Gifford came on to introduce a group of folk singers who sang Greensleeves and Scarlet Ribbons , a most colorful combination. He walked onto the stage again as soon as they were finished, and then went to work in earnest. His next guest was a male Hollywood personality. The male Hollywood personality seemed to be somewhat at a loss because he could neither sing nor dance nor, according to some critics, even act. But Gifford engaged him in some very high-priced banter for a few minutes, and then personally began a commercial about triple-roasted coffee while the Hollywood visitor went off to change his costume for a promised skit. Gifford finished the commercial and then motioned to someone standing just off camera. A stagehand carried a chair into viewing range. Gifford thanked him with a small bow, and then placed the chair in the center of the enormous, empty stage.