Ben Bova - The Starcrossed

“The one thing I was afraid of was that you’d walk out on the show, like everybody else has.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Brenda said, very seriously.

“Why not?”

“B.F. wouldn’t let me.”

“You mean you allow him to run your whole life? He tells you to freeze your… your nose off here in Toronto all winter, on a dead duck of a show, and you do it?”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

He pulled the car into the hotel’s driveway as he asked, “Why don’t you just quit? There are lots of other studios and jobs…”

“I can’t quit Titanic.”

“Why not? What’s Finger got on you?”

“Nothing. Except that he’s my father and I’m the only person in the world that he can really trust.”

“He’s your father?”

Brenda grinned broadly at him. “Yes. And you’re the only person in the whole business who knows it. So please don’t tell anyone else.”

Oxnard was stunned.

He was still groggy, but grinning happily, as they walked arm-in-arm through the hotel lobby, got into an elevator and headed for his room. Neither of them noticed the three-dee set in the lobby; it was tuned to the evening news. A somber-faced sports reporter was saying:

“There’s no telling what effect Toho’s injury will have on the playoff chances of the Honolulu Pineapples. As everyone knows, he’s the league’s leading passer.”

The other half of the Folksy News Duo, a curly haired anchorperson in a gingham dress, asked conversationally, “Isn’t it unusual for a player to break his leg in the shower?”

“That’s right, Arlene,” said the sports announcer. “Just one of those freak accidents. A bad break,” he said archly, “for the Pineapples and their fans.”

The woman made a disapproving clucking sound. “That’s terrible.”

“It certainly is. They’re probably going crazy down in Las Vegas right now, refiguring the odds for the playoff games.”

“You don’t understand!” Bernard Finger shouted. “Every cent I had was tied up in that lousy football team! I’m broke! Ruined!”

He was emptying the drawers of his desk into an impossibly thin attache case. Most of the papers and mememtoes—including a miniature Emmy given him as a gag by a producer, whom Finger promptly fired—were missing the attache case and spilling across the polished surface of the desk or onto the plush carpet.

The usually impressive office reminded Les Montpelier of the scene in a war movie where the general staff has to beat a fast retreat and everybody’s busy stripping the headquarters and burning what they can’t carry.

“But you couldn’t have taken everything out of Titanic’s cash accounts,” Montpelier said, trying to remain calm in the face of Finger’s panic.

“Wanna bet?” Finger was bent over, pulling papers out of the bottommost drawer, discarding most of them and creating a miniature blizzard in the doing.

Montpelier found himself leaning forward tensely in his chair. “But we still get our paychecks. The accounting department is still paying its bills. Isn’t it?”

Finger straightened up and eyed him with a look of scorn for such naivete. “Sure, sure. You know Morrie Witz, down in accounting?”

“Morrie the Mole?”

“Who else? He worked out a system for me. We keep enough in the bank for two weeks of salaries and bills. Everything else we’ve been investing in the Pineapples. Every time they win, we bet on ’em again. The odds keep going down, but we keep making sure money. Better than the stock market.”

“Then you must have a helluva cash reserve right now,” Montpelier said.

“Its already bet!” Finger bawled. “And the Pineapples play the Montana Sasquatches this afternoon…” He glanced at the clock on his littered desk. “They’re already playing.”

“Shall I turn on the game?” Montpelier asked, starting to get up from his chair.

“No! I can’t bear to watch. Without Toho they’re sunk.”

Montpelier eased back into the chair.

“Yes!” Finger burst “Turn it on. I can’t stand not knowing!”

He went back to rummaging through the desk drawers as Montpelier walked across the room to the control panel for the life-sized three-dee set in the corner.

“The Pineapples still have their defensive team intact,” Montpelier reasoned. “And Montana’s not that highscoring a team…”

He found the right channel and tuned in the game. The far comer of the office dissolved into a section of a football field. A burly man in a Sasquatch uniform was kneeling, arms outstretched, barking out numbers. The crowd rumbled in the background. It was raining and windy; it looked cold in Montana.

The camera angle changed to an overhead shot and Montpelier saw that the Sasquatches were trying to kick a field goal. The ball was snapped, the kicker barely got the kick past a pair of onrushing Pineapple defenders, who ruined their orange and yellow uniforms by sprawling in the mud.

Again the camera angle changed, to show the football sailing thrugh the uprights of the goal post. The announcer said, “It’s gooood!l” as the referee raised both arms over his head.

Finger groaned.

“It’s only a field goal,” Montpelier said.

“So as the teams prepare for the kickoff,” the announcer said cheerily, “the score is Montana seventeen, Honolulu zero.”

With a gargling sound, Finger pawed through the attache case. He grabbed a bottle of pills as he yelled, “Turn it off! Turn it off!” and poured half the bottle’s contents down his throat.

Montpelier turned the game off, just catching a view of the scoreboard clock. Only eight minutes of the first quarter had elapsed.

He turned to Finger. “What are you going to do?”

His face white, Titanic’s boss said softly, “Get out of town. Get out of the country. Get off the planet, if I can. Maybe the lunar colony would be a safe place for me… if I could qualify. I’ve got a bad heart, you know.”

Like an ox , Montpelier thought Aloud, he asked, “But you’ve been through bankruptcy proceedings before. Why are you getting so upset over this one?”

Raising his eyes to an unhelpful heaven, Finger said, “The other bankruptcy hearings were when we owed money to banks. Or to the government. What we owe now, we owe to the mob. When they foreclose, they take your head home and mount it on the goddamn wall!”

“The gamblers…”

Finger wagged his head. “Not the gamblers. I’m square with them. The bankers who backed us on ‘The Starcrossed.’ It’s their money I’ve been betting. When the show flops they’re gonna want their money back. With interest.”

“Ohhh.”

“Yeah, ohhh.” Finger knuckled his eyes. “Turn the game on again. Maybe they’re doing something…”

The three-dee image solidified, despite annoying flickers and shimmers, to show an orange-and-yellow Pineapple ball carrier break past two would-be tacklers, twist free of another Sasquatch defender and race down the sidelines. The crowd was roaring and Finger was suddenly on his feet, screaming.

“Go! Go! Go, you black sonofabitch!”

There was only one Sasquatch left in the scene, closing in on the Pineapple runner. They collided exactly at the Montana ten yard line. He twisted partially free, and as he began to fall, another Sasquatch pounced on him. The ball squirted loose.

“Aarrghh!”

What seemed like four hundred men in muddied uniforms piled on top of each other. There was a long moment of breathless suspense while the referees pulled bodies off the mountain of rain-soaked fiesh.

Finger stood frozen, his fists pressed into his cheeks.

The bottom man in the pile was a Sasquatch. And under him was the ball.