“Bill?”
“What?” Without looking up from the control board.
“Why do you keep coming up here every weekend?”
“To make sure the equipment works okay.”
“Oh. That’s awfully good of you.”
He clicked the power off and looked up at her. “That’s a damned lie,” he admitted, to himself as much as to her. “I could stay down at Malibu and wait for you to have some trouble. Or send one of my technicians.”
Brenda’s face didn’t look troubled or surprised. “Then why?”
“Because I like being with you,” he said.
“Really?”
“You know I do.”
She didn’t look away, didn’t laugh, didn’t frown. “I hoped you did. But you never said a word....”
Suddenly his hands were embarrassingly awkward appendages. They wouldn’t stay still.
“Well,” he said, scratching at his five o’clock shadow, “I guess I’m still a teenager in some ways... retarded... I was afraid... afraid you wouldn’t be interested in me.”
“You were wrong,” she said simply.
She leaned toward him and his hands reached for her and he kissed her. She felt warm and safe and good.
They decided to have dinner in his hotel room. Oxnard felt giddy, as if he were hyperventilating or celebrating New Year’s Eve a month early. As they drove through the dark frigid night toward the hotel, he asked:
“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.”
15: THE WARNING
“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 mementoes—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.
