Christopher Fowler - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

“Number Sixteen?”

“The one with the buns.”

“I never saw him before.”

“Oh.” Angie took a bite of an oatmeal cookie and brushed the crumbs daintily from her mouth. “Nice.”

“I suppose. If you like that sort of thing.”

“Here.” She offered Lisa Anne the napkin. “You look like you’re melting.”

She took it and wiped the back of her neck, then squeezed out the ends of her hair, as a burst of laughter came from the theater. That meant Marty had already gone in through the side entrance to warm them up.

“Excuse me,” she said. “It’s showtime.”

Angie followed her to the hall. “You never miss one, do you?”

“Not yet.”

“Aren’t they boring? I mean, it’s not like they’re hits or anything.”

“Most of them are pretty lame,” Lisa Anne admitted.

“So why watch?”

“I have to find out.”

“Don’t tell me. What Marty’s really like?”

“Please.”

“Then why?”

“I’ve got to know why some shows make it,” she said, “and some don’t.”

“Oh, you want to get into the biz?”

“No. But I used to know someone who was. See you.”

I shouldn’t have said that, she thought as she opened the unmarked door in the hall.

The observation booth was dark and narrow with a half-dozen padded chairs facing a two-way mirror. On the other side of the mirror, the test subjects sat in rows of theater seats under several 36-inch television sets suspended from the ceiling.

She took the second chair from the end.

In the viewing theater, Marty was explaining how to use the dials wired into the armrests. They were calibrated from zero to ten with a plastic knob in the center. During the screening the subjects were to rotate the knobs, indicating how much they liked what they saw. Their responses would be recorded and the results then analyzed to help the networks decide whether the show was ready for broadcast.

Lisa Anne watched Marty as he paced, doing his schtick. He had told her that he once worked at a comedy traffic school, and she could see why. He had them in the palm of his hand. Their eyes followed his every move, like hypnotized chickens waiting to be fed. His routine was corny but with just the right touch of hipness to make them feel like insiders. He concluded by reminding them of the fifty dollars cash they would receive after the screening and the discussion. Then, when the lights went down and the tape began to roll, Marty stepped to the back and slipped into the hall. As he entered the observation booth, the audience was applauding.

“Good group this time,” he said, dropping into the chair next to hers.

“You always know just what to say.”

“I do, don’t I?” he said, leaning forward to turn on a tiny 12-inch set below the mirror.

She saw their faces flicker in the blue glow of the cathode ray tubes while the opening titles came up.

The show was something called Dario, You So Crazy! She sighed and sat back, studying their expressions while keeping one eye on the TV screen. It wouldn’t be long before she felt his hand on her forearm as he moved in, telling her what he really thought of the audience, how stupid they were, every last one, down to the little old ladies and the kindly grandfathers and the working men and women who were no more or less ordinary than he was under his Perry Ellis suit and silk tie. Then his breath in her hair and his fingers scraping her pantyhose as if tapping out a message on her knee and perhaps today, this time, he would attempt to deliver that message, while she offered breathless quips to let him know how clever he was and how lucky she felt to be here. She shuddered and turned her cheek to him in the dark.

“Who’s that actor?” she said.

“Some Italian guy. I saw him in a movie. He’s not so bad, if he could learn to talk English.”

She recognized the co-star. It was Rowan Atkinson, the slight, bumbling everyman from that British TV series on PBS.

“Mr Bean!” she said.

“Roberto Benigni,” Marty corrected, reading from the credits.

“I mean the other one. This is going to be good. ”

“I thought you were on your break,” said Marty.

“This is more important.”

He stared at her transparent reflection in the two-way mirror.

“You were going to take the day off.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

The pilot was a comedy about an eccentric Italian film director who had come to America in search of fame and fortune. Mr Bean played his shy, inept manager. They shared an expensive rented villa in the Hollywood Hills. Just now they were desperate to locate an actress to pose as Dario’s wife, so that he could obtain a green card and find work before they both ran out of money.

She immediately grasped the premise and its potential.

It was inspired. Benigno’s abuse of the language would generate countless hilarious misunderstandings; coupled with his manager’s charming incompetence, the result might be a television classic, thanks in no small measure to the brilliant casting. How could it miss? All they needed was a good script. She realized that her mind had drifted long enough to miss the screenwriter’s name. The only credit left was the show’s creator/producer, one Barry E. Tormé. Probably the son of that old singer, she thought. What was his name? Mel. Apparently he had fathered a show-business dynasty. The other son, Tracy, was a successful TV writer; he had even created a science-fiction series at Fox that lasted for a couple of seasons. Why had she never heard of brother Barry? He was obviously a pro.

She sat forward, fascinated to see the first episode.

“Me, Dario!” Benigni crowed into a gold-trimmed telephone, the third time it had rung in less than a minute. It was going to be his signature bit.

“O, I Dream!” she said.

“Huh?”

“The line, Marty. Got you.”

The letters rearranged themselves automatically in her mind. It was child’s play. She had almost expected him to come up with it first. They had kept the game going since her first day at AmiDex, when she pointed out that his full name was an anagram for Marty licks on me. It got his attention.

“You can stop with the word shit,” he said.

He sounded irritated, which surprised her. “I thought you liked it.”

“What’s up with that, anyway?”

“It’s a reflex,” she said. “I can’t help it. My father taught me when I was little.”

“Well, it’s getting old.”

She turned to his profile in the semidarkness, his pale, cleanshaven face and short, neat hair as two-dimensional as a cartoon cutout from the back of a cereal box.

“You know, Marty, I was thinking. Could you show me the War Room sometime?” She moved her leg closer to his. “Just you and me, when everybody’s gone. So I could see how it works.”

“How what works?”

She let her hand brush his knee. “Everything. The really big secrets.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know.” Had she said too much? “But if I’m going to work here, I should know more about the company. What makes a hit, for example. Maybe you could tell me. You explain things so well.”

“Why did you come here?”

The question caught her offguard. “I needed a job.”

“Plenty of jobs out there,” he snapped. “What is it, you got a script to sell?”

The room was cold and her feet were numb. Now she wanted to be out of here. The other chairs were dim, bulky shapes, like half-reclining corpses, as if she and Marty were not alone in the room.

“Sorry,” she said.

“I told you to stay home today.”

No, he hadn’t. “You want me to take the day off?”

He did not answer.