David Wallace - Girl With Curious Hair

"Yas," I drawled to David Letterman. I yawned, touching my ear absently.

Close up, he looked depressingly young. At most thirty-five. He congratulated me on the series' renewal, the Emmy nomination, and said my network had handled my unexpected pregnancy well on the show's third year, arranging to have me seen only behind waist-high visual impediments for thirteen straight episodes.

"That was fun," I said sarcastically. I laughed drily.

"Big, big fun," Letterman said, and the audience laughed.

"Oh Jesus God let him see you're being sarcastic and dry," my husband said.

Paul Shaffer did a go-figure with his hands in response to something Letterman asked him.

David Letterman had a tiny label affixed to his cheek (he did have freckles); the label said MAKEUP. This was left over from an earlier joke, during his long monologue, when Letterman had returned from a commercial air-break with absolutely everything about him labeled. The sputtering fountain between us and the footlights was overhung with a crudely lettered arrow: DANCING WATERS.

"So then Edilyn any truth to the rumors linking that crazy thing over at your husband's network and the sort of secondary rumors. . " He looked from his index card to Paul Shaffer. "Gee you know Paul it says 'secondary rumors' here; is it OK to go ahead and call them secondary rumors? What does that mean, anyway, Paul: 'secondary rumors'?"

"We in the band believe it could mean any of… really any of hundreds of things, Dave," Shaffer said, smiling. I smiled. People laughed.

The voice of Ron came over the air in my ear: "Say no." I imagined a wall of angles of me, the wound in Ron's head and the transmitting thing at the wound, my husband seated with his legs crossed and his arm out along the back of wherever he was.

". . secondary or not, about you and Tito's fine, fine program perhaps, ah, leaving commercial television altogether at the end of next season and maybe moving over to that other, unnamed, uncommercial network?"

I cleared my throat. "Absolutely every rumor about my husband is true." The audience laughed.

Letterman said, "Ha ha." The audience laughed even harder.

"As for me," I smoothed my skirt in that way prim women do, "I know next to nothing, David, about the production or business sides of the show. I am a woman who acts."

"And, you know, wouldn't that look terrific emblazoned on the T-shirts of women everywhere?" Letterman asked, fingering his tiepin's label.

"And was it ever a crazy thing over at his network, Dave, from what I heard," said Reese, the NBC Sports coordinator, on my other side, in another of these chairs that seemed somehow disemboweled. Around Reese's distinguished eyes were two little raccoon-rings of soot, from his hobby's explosion. He looked to Letterman. "A power struggle in public TV?"

"Kind of like a… a bloody coup taking place in the League of Women Voters, wouldn't you say, Edilyn?"

I laughed.

"Riot squads and water-cannon moving in on a faculty tea."

Letterman and Reese and Shaffer and I were falling about the place. The audience was laughing.

"Polysyllables must just be flying," I said.

"Really. . really grammatically correct back-stabbing going on all over. . "

We all tried to pull ourselves together as my husband gave me some direction.

"The point is I'm afraid I just don't know," I said, as Letterman and Shaffer were still laughing and exchanging looks. "In fact," I said, "I'm not even all that aware or talented or multifaceted an actress."

David Letterman was inviting the audience, whom he again called ladies and gentlemen (which I liked) to imagine I AM A WOMAN WHO ACTS emblazoned on a shirt.

"That's why I'm doing those commercials you're seeing all the time now," I said lightly, yawning.

"Well, and now hey, I wanted to ask you about that, Edilyn," Letterman said. "The problem, ah, is that" — he rubbed his chin— "I'll need to ask you what they're commercials for without anyone of course mentioning the fine. . fine and may I say delicious?"

"Please do."

"Delicious product by name." He smiled. "Since that would be a commercial itself right there."

I nodded, smiled. My earplug was silent. I looked around the stage innocently, pretending to stretch, whistling a very famous jingle's first twelve-note bar.

Letterman and the audience laughed. Paul Shaffer laughed. My husband's electric voice crackled approvingly. I could also hear Ron laughing in the background; his laugh did sound deadpan.

"I think that probably gives us a good clear picture, yes," Letterman grinned. He threw his index card at a pretend window behind us. There was an obviously false sound of breaking glass.

The man seemed utterly friendly.

My husband transmitted something I couldn't make out because Letterman had put his hands behind his head with its helmet of hair and was saying "So then I guess why, is the thing, Edilyn. I mean we know about the dollars, the big, big dollars over there in, ah, prime time. They scribble vague hints, allusions, really, is all, they're such big dollars, about prime-time salaries in the washrooms here at NBC. They're amounts that get discussed only in low tones. Here you are," he said, "you've had, what, three quality television series? Countless guest-appearances on other programs. .?"

"A hundred and eight," I said.

He looked aggrieved at the camera a moment as the audience laughed.". . Virtually countless guest-credits," he said. "You've got a critically acclaimed police drama that's been on now, what, three years? four years? You've got this…" he looked at an index card". . talented daughter who's done several fine films and who's currently in a series, you've got a husband who's a mover and a shaker, basically a legend in comedy development…"

"Remember 'Laugh-In'?" said the NBC Sports coordinator. " 'Flip Wilson'? 'The Smothers'? Remember 'Saturday Night Live' back when it was good, for a few years there?" He was shaking his head in admiration.

Letterman released his own head. "So series, daughter's series, Emmy nomination, husband's virtually countless movings and shakings and former series, one of the best marriages in the industry if not the Northern, ah, Hemisphere…" He counted these assets off on his hands. His hands were utterly average. "You're loaded, sweetie," he said. "If I may." He smiled and played with his coffee mug. I smiled back.

"So then Edilyn a nation is wondering what's the deal with going off and doing these. . wiener commercials," he asked in a kind of near-whine that he immediately exaggerated into a whine.

Rudy's small voice came: "See how he exaggerated the whine the minute he saw how—?"

"Because I'm not a great actress, David," I said.

Letterman looked stricken. For a moment in the angled white lights I looked at him and he looked stricken for me. I was positive I was dealing with a basically sincere man.

"Those things you listed," I said, "are assets, is all they are." I looked at him. "They're my assets, David, they're not me. I'm an actress in commercial television. Why not act in television commercials?"

"Be honest," Rudy hissed, his voice slight and metallic as a low-quality phone. Letterman was pretending to sip coffee from an empty mug.

"Let's be honest," I said. The audience was quiet. "I just had a very traumatic birthday, and I've been shedding illusions right and left. You're now looking at a woman with no illusions, David."

Letterman seemed to perk up at this. He cleared his throat. My earplug hissed a direction never to use the word "illusions."

"That's sort of a funny coincidental thing," Letterman was saying speculatively. "I'm an illusion with no women; say do you. . detect a sort of parallel, there, Paul?"