Susan made the measuring gesture with her hands, mimicking Jill Joyce. “This Iong?” she said. “Good heavens.”
She looked at me, looked back at the measured distance between her hands, looked at me again, and slowly shook her head. I shrugged.
“I thought I could bluff it through,” I said.
“You think that about everything,” Susan said. “Are you going to take the job?”
I turned the glass around in little circles on the table in front of me, holding it lightly with both hands, watching it revolve.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“She’s awfully difficult,” Susan said. She had her elbows on the table and she held her teacup in both hands, talking to me over the rim.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Today was not unusual,” Susan said.
“What about the four and a half pages they had to shoot this afternoon?” I said.
“Sandy will shoot around it,” Susan said. “He’s amazing.”
“Why don’t they just fire her?” I said. “Get someone who’s sober all day?”
“TVQ,” Susan said and smiled like she does when she’s able to kid me and herself at the same time. The maitre d’ came over and told us our table was ready for dinner.
“Whenever you’re ready, sir. No hurry.” He went back to his post near the door.
“TVQ?” I said sadly.
“Television Quotient. It’s a way of rating star appeal,” she said.
“Of course,” I said.
“Jill Joyce has the highest TVQ of anyone now on television,” Susan said.
“And to think she wanted to jump on my bones,” I said.
“Makes you feel sort of humble, doesn’t it?”
“And a TVQ like that translates into ratings which translate into renewal which translates eventually into a big syndication deal which translates…”
“Into money,” I said.
“Bingo,” Susan said. “Mucho dinero, sweetheart.”
“Have you gone, just a twidge, ah, Hollywood?” I said.
“I’ll say. Film is my life.” Susan’s eyes crinkled and her smile was brighter than Jill Joyce’s TVQ.
“And it doesn’t cut into your work?”
“My patients? No. Nothing cuts into that.”
“Nothing? I remember a Monday morning three months ago… ”
“Except you,” Susan said. “Occasionally, and, if it’s the Monday morning I’m thinking about, I feel that you overpowered me. That doesn’t count.”
“Then how come I was on the bottom?”
“Just never mind,” Susan said. “It’s time to go up for dinner.”
We went up and sat and looked at the menus. The room looked out over the Public Garden which was lit with concealed spots and stiller than death in the brute cold evening.
“Actually,” Susan said as she scanned the menu, “my formal duties don’t require me to be on the set. I read scripts and make suggestions. That’s really the extent of my technical advice. The rest of the time I come around and watch because it fascinates me.”
I nodded, contemplating the herbed chicken with mashed potatoes.
“It doesn’t fascinate you?” Susan said.
“Fascinated me for about ten minutes,” I said. “But I gather they do this for more than ten minutes.”
“Twelve hours a day,” Susan said. “Six days a week. More if they’re behind.”
“And a show starring Jill Joyce often gets behind,” I said.
“Sandy and most of the directors have worked with her before,” Susan said. “They try to arrange to shoot most of her scenes before lunch. Close-ups and stuff. Long scenes they can use a double, or they can loop her dialogue afterwards.”
“Loop her dialogue,” I said.
“Aren’t I awful?” Susan said. She smiled happily about it. “I’m totally stagestruck. I talk the jargon. I’m not sure I can be saved.”
“In fact, one of the eighty-two things, by actual count, that I like about you is the totality of your enthusiasms,” I said.
“What are the other eighty-one?” Susan said.
