Ben Bova - The Starcrossed

Brenda glowered at Titanic’s chief. “How nice do you want me to be to him?”

Finger glowered back at her. “You get paid for using your brains, not your pelvis. There’s plenty action for a Texas cowboy in town. You just show him where the waterholes are.”

So she had dressed in a demure, translucent knee-length gown and decorated it with plenty of the electronic jewelry that TNT manufactured. As she sat in the booth, silhouetted against the gathering twilight, she glittered like an airport runway.

“Yessir, you shore are purty,” Connors said, with a puppydog wag in his voice.

“Do you think,” Brenda asked coolly, “that your company will want to advertise your electronic jewelry on ‘The Starcrossed’? Seems like a natural, to me.”

The booths at the Roundeley Room were soundproofed so that private conversations could not be overheard, and also to protect the restaurant’s patrons from the noisy entrances made by some customers.

Gloria Glory swept into the restaurant’s foyer, flanked by Francois Dulaq, Rita Yearling and Gregory Earnest. The effect was stunning.

Once a regally tall, statuesque woman, Gloria Glory had allowed many years of success as a gossip columnist to freeze her self-image. While she still thought of herself as regal and statuesque, to the outside world she closely resembled an asthmatic dirigible swathed in neon-bright floor-length robes.

No one ever told her this, of course, because her power to make or destroy something as fragile as a “showbusiness personality” was enormous. In the delicate world of the entertainment arts, where talent and experience counted for about a tenth of what publicity and perseverance could get for you, Gloria Glory possessed a negatonnage unapproached by any other columnist. Her viewers were fanatically devoted to her: what Gloria said was “in” was in; who she said was “out” went hungry.

So words such as fat, overweight and diet had long since disappeared from Gloria’s world. They were as unspoken near her as descriptions of nasal protuberances went unsaid near Byrano de Bergerac.

The maitre d’, the hatcheck girl, two headwaiters who usually did nothing but stand near the entrance and look imperious, and a dozen other customers all clustered around Gloria and her entourage.

The hatcheck girl and most of the customers were asking Dulaq for his autograph. They recognized the hockey star’s handsome face, his rugged physique, and his name spelled on the back of the All-Canadian All-Stars team jacket that he was wearing.

The headwaiters and most of the men in the growing crowd were panting around Rita Yearling, who wore a seethrough clingtight dress with nothing under it except her own impressive physique. The traffic jam was beginning to cause a commotion and block the newcomers who were piling up at the head of the escalator.

The maitre d’, with the unerring instinct of the breed, gravitated toward Gloria Glory. He had never seen her before and never watched television. But he knew money when he sniffed it. Calmly ignoring the rising tide of shrieks and curses from the top of the escalator as body tumbled upon body, he gave Gloria the utmost compliment: he didn’t ask if she had a reservation.

“Madam would you prefer a private room, perhaps?”

Gregory Earnest, roundly ignored by all present, started to say, “I made a reserva…”

But Gloria’s foghorn voice drowned him out. “Naah… I like to be right in the middle of all the hustle and bustle. How about something right in the center of everything?”

“Of course,” said the maitre d’.

Gloria swept regally across the crowded restaurant, like a Montgolfier Brothers hot-air balloon trailing pretty little pennants and fluttering ribbons of silk. Earnest and the two stars followed in her wake, while the maitre d’ preceded her with the haughty air of Grand Vizier. The jumbled, tumbled, grumbling crowd at the top of the escalator was left to sort itself out. After all, that’s what insurance lawyers were for, was it not?

Montpelier couldn’t hear the shouts and shrieks from the foyer, of course. But he watched Gloria and her entourage march to the table nearest the computer-directed jukebox. He breathed a silent thanksgiving that Gabriel hadn’t arrived at the same time as Earnest.

“Um, would you like a drink, Mr. Good?” he asked. Good held up a long-fingered hand. “Never touch alcohol, Mr. Montpelier…”

“Les.”

“Alcohol and business don’t mix. Never have.”

“Well, that’s one thing you and Ron Gabriel have in common,” Montpelier said.

“Oh? What’s that?”

“He doesn’t drink, either.”

“Really?” Good’s perpetual smile got wider and somehow tenser. “That’s a surprise.”

“What do you mean?”

“From all the depravity in his scripts, I assumed he was either an alcoholic or a drug fiend. Or both.”

“Depravity?” Monteplier heard his voice squeak.

“Yer not married or nuthin’, are yew?” asked Connors. Brenda shook her head slowly. “No, I’m a rising young corporate executive.”

He was working on his second bourbon and water. Their dinners remained on a corner of the table, untouched. “Must be tough to get ahead. Lotsa competition.” “Quite a bit.” Brenda sipped at her vodka sour.

“If TNT sponsored yer new show, it’s be a real feather in yore cap, huh?”

“Yes it would. But I won’t go to bed with you for it” Connors’ face fell. “Wh… who said anything about that? I’m a married man!”

Now Brenda permitted herself to smile again. “I’m sorry,” she said with great sincerity. “I didn’t mean to shock you. But, well… there are lots of men who try to take advantage of a woman in a situation like this. I’m glad you’re not that kind of man.”

“Hell, no,” said Connors, looking puzzled, disappointed and slightly nettled.

Brenda sweetened her smile. Have to introduce him to some of the professional ladies working at the hotel , she knew, before he decides to get angry .

Earnest sat across the table from Dulaq. Between the two men sat Gloria Glory and Rita Yearling. Four appetizers had been served; two were still sitting untouched but Dulaq’s and Gloria’s were already demolished.

“And you, you great big hunk of muscle,” Gloria turned to Dulaq, “how do you like acting?”

The hockey star shrugged. “It’s okay. Ain’t had a chance t’really do much… wit’ the riot and all…”

Earnest felt his blood pressure explode in his ears.

“Riot?” Gloria looked instantly alert. “What riot?”

“It wasn’t a riot,” Earnest said quickly. “It was just a bit of a misunderstanding…”

“I’m afraid it was all my fault,” Rita offered.

“Dis Gabriel guy gimme a hard time, so I punched him out.”

“You hit Ron Gabriel?”

For an instant there was absolute silence at the table. Even Dulaq seemed to realize, in his dim way, that Gloria’s reaction would have enormous implications for his future in show business.

“Uh… yeah. Once. Between de eyes.”

Gloria’s bloated face seemed to puff out even more and she suddenly let loose a loud guffaw. “Oh no! You punched that little creep between the eyes! Oh, it’s too marvelous!” She roared with laughter.

Dulaq and Rita joined in. Earnest laughed too, but his mind was racing. Fearfully, he touched Gloria’s bouffant sleeve. She wiped tears from her eyes as she turned to him.

“Um, Gloria,” he begged. “You’re not going to, uh… broadcast this, are you?”

“Broadcast it? Ron Gabriel getting what he’s always asking for? It’s too delicious!”

“Yes, but it could, well… it could reflect poorly on the show.”