Tammy! Part II

She was a victim of circumcisions.

From her earliest memories of that island to her current occupation on this more troubled, yet less obtuse island, Tammy had the peculiar isolation of a duckling who, in the absence of her natural mother, imprints on the nearest sizable target—regardless of its artificiality. Like an experimenter wielding a tiny wooden pull-cart shaped like Raggedy Ann. With Mom and Daddy at work all day, a surrogate was provided in the form of the cathode ray tube. In the Delecroix house there was nothing called “bad TV.” From her first waking hours to those extra few minutes she’d beg for, as her bedtime was imminent, Tammy sat. When she reached that special flowering age, her left hemisphere might be involved in a phone conversation, but what was left stayed fixed on the flashing images and personalities that zipped at a constant pace from screen to couch with the greatest of ease. Martha Quinn was sooo cool. Moonwalking Michael J. was second only to Michael J. Fox, and neither could hold a candle to Magnum. Even at the tender age of twelve, the sexual tension of “Moonlighting” was palpable, shooting a sense of feminine self-actualization (of a fictional character, mind you) mainline to her brain. Oh, the stories she could tell. Oh, the magazines she could sell.

It was no secret that she could give a rousing performance with a microphone in her tender hands. She found her place quickly in this man’s world. She found her name looked just swell on a studio wall adorned with an exclamation point. She found that she could talk. It never seemed to matter that she didn’t have anything to say. This was Frank’s job.

“Listen. I—uh…What do you say we get together sometime this week? Do something fun.”

It was a stupid thing to say, but it’s out there now. Can’t reel it back in—not in these waters. Frank supposes it has something to do with the way she’s standing—how her back calf flexes the slightest bit as her upper body dips almost imperceptibly forward when she asks a question. He doesn’t mind that the color of her eyes is too iridescent to be human or that her hair was borrowed from some other TV “personality.” Creatures such as this are seldom found out of their natural habitat, and Frank hasn’t been on this particular safari in some time. She somehow laughs both like a child who doesn’t get the joke and the joke teller.

“Wait. Now wait a second. What’s with all the laughter? I wasn’t trying to be—”

“Funny?”

“Right. I’m serious so how about it?” Frank tosses up a desperation full-court lob to salvage his televised dignity.

“Mr. Parker. We didn’t have you on this show so that you could make a pass at the host.” She’s on the run now, Frank thinks. The verbal flinch.

Frank hates to duck. If something is coming at him, it is his duty to see the thing on the horizon early enough to do something about it before arrival. Re-direction: a social strategic defense initiative mounted with the conviction it deserves. The only problem with this habit is that the best things in life tend to be unexpected, unless one happens to be the fruits-of-you-labor type person, which Frank is not. It’s simple, really. There is the good and the bad. The good comes equally from hard work and dumb luck. Sure, there’s plenty of dumb good to go around—one need not even know a politician to understand this. Serendipity is the spice of life.

Frank once told his mother that paprika was the spice of life, and she didn’t laugh. Sure, variety possesses the rightful claim to this venerable position in the spice rack of pithy maximism. And yet, what creates more variety than the whims of rolling bones, spinning wheels, the ace of spades and colorful figures like Vito Three-Cheese and Johnny Roastbeef. The variety of random processes is infinite. And for Frank, that which was arbitrary was friend, foe, and sage.

For instance. It was lucky for Frank that he wasn’t born into poverty, and as luck would have it, as he would say, the wealth of his parents could not amount to anything less than a small fortune in the eyes of even the most impressionable wide-eyed youngster. The money spent on fine clothes and fine vacations and the finest lawyers to pay for his father’s trial he always said revolved around “creative financing” and the appeals, and his mother’s therapy both before and after sentencing took its emotional toll on the kid whose only real need for money evolved from the callous manner in which his family liked to spend it. The passage of time and the sanity he found in writing and filmmaking eventually found him on his own, and despite what his mother might assert, a separate entity than the seed from which he sprung. All in all, it’s in the way you look at things. Frank knows that there are no victims in the world—only saps and the successful. Oh. There are also the successful saps.

“Could we return to the subject at hand, please,” she says. The miniscule quaver in her voice could probably only be detected using NASA technology or the ears of the individual who performed the insertion of this particular flutter. Frank’s ears tend to stay open long after his brain has left for the drive home.

“Sure. We could talk about the film, although I feel more comfortable discussing something to which we can both relate.”

“You don’t think I can relate to Macbeth?”

“No. I mean, have you seen my film?”

“I have not, as of yet, had that distinct pleasure.”

This one catches him somewhat by surprise.

“Really. And yet you’re fully prepared to discuss it in detail. Interesting concept. I might have had all sorts of opinions about Mozart’s last gig at the palace, if you’d like to delve into them. Unfortunately, I took some mean acid on the morning of the show, and I forgot which country it was in. Missed the whole darn thing. Of course, I read about it in the following day’s Baroque Balladeer, so I know Wolfgang really tore the place to shreds and you know that the best part—”

“—Sorry to interrupt, but I need to take a break. We’ll be right back with more Tammy!”

“…was how he referred to himself in the third person without extraneous punctuation,” Frank finishes to himself.

Tammy walks onto the stage and asks, “What the hell was that all about?”

“Really, what was going on there,” Bea chimes in.

“Who asked you?” Frank and Tammy harmonize in perfect sync.

“I’ll be leaving now…” Exit guest number one.

“Bye. What’s your problem, Frank?” The grating in her voice offers the subtle intonation of a Robert Johnson recording—blues-driven with the pops and scratches of decades-old vinyl 78’s.

“Listen to me,” Frank says as calmly and authoritatively as he can muster without coming off goofy like Tom Snyder or Larry King. Politely, doing his best Bob Costas, he continues, “Get off the stage. You’re wasting this.”

“Huh? Wasting what? What are y—”

“—You’re missing out on your best chance to get what you want.”

Tammy never knew what she wanted. She had the egregious habit of deferring to popular opinion. What a doosey, that one. Sincerely, Frank asks himself, if it were indeed popular to hold an opinion in this country, could anyone account for the popularity of Jerry Lewis? Or the Red Scare? Or anything, really. If all there is in a life is Top 40 radio, prime-time television, Hollywood studio films, and magazines that recap all this shit for those who missed it or just need to be told what’s next, then when does this life end and how can hell possibly compete?

“We’ll be back from commercial in forty-five seconds,” she says, “and I expect a little more cooperation from my guests.”

“And I expect you to sense the signs of some plucky television. Conflict and ratings are close friends, I’m told.”

“Listen, pal. I do my show. Play by my rules or don’t play at all.”

“Your rules are no fun. You’re like a hockey game without checking.”

“If you’d like to leave, I’m sure that I can fill the rest of the show talking to the audience. You don’t have to stay.”

“Tammy. Honey. I’m only here because your producer and my agent conspired to bring me here. In fact, if Sonny hadn’t called me an hour ago, I’d still be sleeping. Much like your audience. So if you’ve got brilliant plans to fill this video void, be my guest. I am no longer yours.” And then, “Have you given my suggestion any thought?”

“Huh? What sugg—”

“You and me. A date sometime, perhaps?”

“Are you kidding me? I’ve got fifteen seconds to airtime, no guest because you’re downright arrogant and antagonistic, and you still think I’m interested? Are you insane?”

“Not really. I just thought it was worth a shot.”

“Well your shot went a wee bit wide of the net, buddy. Get off my fucking stage!”

This is the last Frank hears of Tammy as he exits, stage left and finds an appropriately marked door with a red push handle and disconnected alarm. He can hear that crusty intern shouting, “And five, four, three…” as the door shuts behind him and he jumps into his Jeep. Back in the studio, Tammy talks to her audience with the confidence of Sir Galahad after slaying some shapeshifting hellbeast. In his car, insulated from the falling rain, Frank tinkers with the lighter, pops in a CD, sparks his funny cigarette, and wonders how far it is to the nearest Wendy’s.