Lee Goldberg: The Walk

Marty turned and turned and turned, trying to take it all in. He couldn’t. The enormity of the destruction was too much.

He felt an immediate distance, as if seeing it on a TV screen instead of living it. These were special effects, cardboard miniatures and plastic models. For a moment, he almost believed if he squinted, he could make out the matte lines between the real image and the computer-generated one painted in around it.

But he couldn’t.

All of a sudden the ground started to heave. At first Marty thought it was an aftershock; then he realized it was himself, his whole body shaking violently. He fell to his knees and started to gag, vomiting until he thought he’d start spitting out organs.

Finally, the gagging stopped and Marty just stayed there, his eyes closed, waiting for his body to stop shaking, puke in his throat, in his nose. He found the horrible smell and sick taste strangely reassuring. It was something he recognized.

Marty straightened up and found a Kleenex in his pocket. He blew his nose, balled up the tissue, and tossed it.

Now he knew why he didn’t hear sirens. Because no help was coming. Not for anyone. Not for a long time.

Time.

He’d left the warehouse set in a hurry, glancing at his watch as he rushed out, worried he’d be late for the staff meeting.

That was the last thing he did before it happened.

Now he looked at his watch again, a drop of blood landing on the cracked crystal just as he noted the time: 9:15 a.m. Tuesday.

7:00 a.m. Tuesday

The radio report that woke Marty up predicted another day of sweltering heat and unhealthful air quality. Everyone was urged to stay indoors and avoid breathing too much.

Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be a problem for him. He’d just go from the re-circulated air of his house to the re-circulated air of his car to the re-circulated air of his office with only seconds in between. But not today. He had to go downtown and make an appearance on the set.

Marty slapped the radio silent and didn’t bother to look on the other side of the bed. He knew she’d already fled downstairs to the safety of the morning paper. Beth was always gone when he awoke, no matter what time it was.

It wasn’t always that way.

They used to make love in the mornings, then lie tangled together, the sheets twisted around them, waiting for the radio alarm to go on and the chatty newscasters to drive them out of bed. Not any more.

He got up.

His house was above the smog, or at least he was high enough on the Calabasas hillside to enjoy the illusion that he was. From his bedroom window, he looked down onto the San Fernando Valley, at the thick, brown haze blanketing the flat urban sprawl. The layer of floating crud was trapped between the hills, which were slowly being devoured by tract homes like his. Only those homes cost about $300,000 less and were crammed onto a mere 6000-square-foot patch of dry graded dirt. They were stucco boxes for the Camry class.

Marty shifted his gaze to the red-tile roof of the Spanish colonial guard house and the morning progression of gardeners and pool cleaners and housekeepers climbing up the steep hill of his gated community in their over-loaded pick-ups and dented cars. He wondered if they knew they weren’t supposed to breathe today.

He trudged naked into the bathroom, and as he stood urinating into the toilet, reminded himself of all the things on his schedule. First, visit the set of Go to Heller, a supernatural pilot about a dead cop who rises from the grave and becomes a private eye.

Marty’s plan was to shake a few hands and pretend the network was wildly enthusiastic about the footage they were seeing, then rush back to the office for the weekly staff meeting where, as the guy in charge of current programming, he was responsible for the creative direction of the network’s shows.

Standards amp; Practices was in an uproar over the nipplage in the romantic adventure series Sam and Sally. Seeing erect nipples under clothing once in an hour was considered an acceptable accident. Twice was salacious. Three times was offensive content. They wanted Sally to start taping herself down. Marty was adamantly against it.

In the shower, under the hottest spray he could endure, he considered the various ways he could argue his point. He could try and shame them: Nipples are a fact of life. We all have them. What are we trying to hide here? It’s not like she’s running around topless. It was ludicrous to demand that an actress “restrain her aggressive nipples” so some tight-ass censor could pretend women didn’t have them.

Or he could take the artistic, pragmatic approach. More and more viewers are fleeing the artificially chaste world of network television for the more realistic programming on pay-cable, where nudity, sex, and profanity are commonplace. If they are going to successfully compete, they have to be less puritanical in their thinking.

Or he could try the truth. The only reason anybody watched Sam and Sally was to see Sally’s nipples. And if she taped them down, they might at well cancel the show.

As Marty slipped into his beige pants, white shirt, and navy blue dark jacket, he decided to go with the truth, if only to see that standards prick Adam Horsting turn pale.

He headed for the stairs, pausing for a moment to look in the kid’s room. They didn’t have a kid, but they had the room. For some reason, he just couldn’t pass the open door without looking in. Stuffed animals with permanent, vacant stares looked at him between the slats of the empty crib. We’re waiting.

Marty went back and closed the door, but he knew it would be open by the time he got home. He hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen with an enthusiasm he didn’t feel.

Beth was sitting at the kitchen table in her bathrobe, leaning over the LA Times and a cup of coffee, her bare feet entwined in the fur of their sleeping dog, Max. The fat golden retriever delighted in being her ottoman. It was one of two things Max was good at. The other was the ability to pick the most expensive shoes Marty owned to chew on. Max obviously liked the taste of Italian leather.

His wife had short blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a band of freckles across her nose that made her look like a mischievous child. People thought she was cute, and she hated that. She was certain it meant that no one took her seriously.

“Good morning,” He said, sticking his head in the pantry, looking for something he could eat on the run.

“They found a shark with a mouth that glows in the dark,” she said. “It got caught in a fisherman’s net. They think it’s some unknown species that lives in the deepest, darkest part of the ocean.”

“Uh-huh.” He peered into an open box of Cinnamon Pop Tarts. There was one foil package left inside. That would hold him until he could swipe some fruit off the craft services table on the set.

“They think the shark swims with his mouth open. The light attracts the fish and they swim right down his throat,” she flipped through the pages, scanning the headlines. “They think there could be lots of species down there we’ve never seen.”

“Sounds like there could be a series in that.” He stuck the foil pack in his pocket and went to the refrigerator, where he snagged a can of Coke, absently knocking something on the floor. “Though the last successful underwater show was thirty years ago.”

“The whole world doesn’t revolve around television.” Beth said, followed by one of her dismissive sighs.

“Most people wouldn’t know what they wanted to eat, what they wanted to wear, or who they wanted to fuck if the TV didn’t tell them,” he bent down to pick up whatever he dropped. “So as vice president of current drama, I obviously play a vital role in our society.”